A Xrossed Castle
by UruExplorer DTC
Summary: The Floating Castle AINCRAD- home to 10,000 trapped players- rests on a pinnacle of change. Enter Yuu Amano- Stage Left. Meanwhile, Quartzmon plots his next move across decades and several iterations. Somethings are bound to fall through the cracks somewhere, are they not?
1. The Temporal Dive Machine!

**A.N.: Greetings! If you're following me off of my normal account, then you'll recognize this for what it is. If you've stumbled upon this and have NO CLUE what is going on here, then let me explain. This is Chapter 82 of my longer fanfic, _DIGIMON XROS WARS! ALTERNATE UNIVERSE 02_. *WHY* am I posting it here, you ask? Because this chapter, and the ones to follow on this story, form their own individual story arc that can stand alone as their own Xros Over story without really knowing what's going on in the other story... You don't need complete knowledge of what came before, as the needed information is explained here, but Do be aware that there are *Spoilers* in this for that other story! Plus, in the other story, this arc is interrupted with alternating chapters of another story arc, and for those that wish to see it as one whole, this story is here for you! That said and done, however... Let's get to the story, Ne?**

* * *

Somewhere in time and space... Quartzmon mused on the events of his Sort-of-Kind-of-Success.

He had Xros Heart right where he wanted them- on opposite sides of a temporal rift- where they should have all died from the double explosion. But here was where the failure came into play! Only that pesky Tagiru, his wife Chou, her cousin _Airu-_ He shuddered just thinking the name- and their various friends presently in Digi-Quartz had been the only ones lost to time, and even then it had been to _facilitate_ a pre-existing **[TIMELOOP]**.

Their future selves had then intervened and saved the rest of Xros Heart- as well as all of those interloping "Legendary Heroes" from those other dimensions- from eternal doom.

And that screwed things up_ not too majorly,_ but still enough that it made him pause to think.

His created Universe had still been born- and the timeline branching had worked just fine- but there in lied the problem. Their Prime Self had gone into that born Universe, leaving the clean up to the copies.

But...The problem remained that they were onto him to some degree. Those heroes of Xros Heart _knew_ there was a third gate out there somewhere- and if they found it...!

Quartzmon roared with frustration as he ran his hands over his hairless scalp. _"Oh Why did they _**ALL**_ have to _**SURVIVE?!"**

Now they were SURE to follow him into the Aether- the space between spaces- the void between voids:

The very fabric of time and space itself.

And they would hunt him down, and surely kill him if given the chance.

No. He had to do something else. He had to distract them from finding the new Multiverse. He'd have to be sneaky. Hide it in plain sight.

But HOW?

At that moment, a future version of him (either future or another DOOMED copy. He didn't remember doing this message delivery yet) sailed past him, stating a set of temporal coordinates as he _wooshed_ past, and sailed into another dimension.

Quartzmon's many beady little eyes screwed up in concentration as he thought about those coordinates...And then he found his mental-self in the home of a rather quaint looking scientist.

He was programming something, or rather tying programming into an existing environment- a video game, by the looks of it- and he was muttering, "soon my dream will become reality..."

Quartzmon, at this point nothing but a spirit ghost, looked around the room. There were designs for helmets, and a giant Castle of one hundred floors...

And he formed a mouth specifically for the purposes of smirking evilly. "Distraction get." his voice echoed through the room.

* * *

_**SWORD ART ONLINE**_

**AINCRAD FLOOR 1- SUB DUNGEON**

**OCTOBER 31ST, 2024.**

* * *

_"The Black Swordsman"_ Kirito and his loving wife Asuna "_The Flash_" were on a mission. On a self imposed quest to the First Floor during their honeymoon to investigate a strange young girl named Yui whom they found wandering in the forests of the 22nd floor, a woman named Yuiler, of the guild "_The Army_," came to them with a request to help her search a recently uncovered dungeon under the first floor of Aincrad for her tricked friend, Thinker, who was now trapped within that dungeon without a weapon.

If you are un-familiar with this universe, then the simple fact that, in this particular VRMMO, death in the game equals death in reality should explain all you need to know about why this was such a dangerous thing.

_Sword Art Online_, two years ago, had changed from the ground breaking VRMMO that it was into a _**[Death Game]**_**.** It's designer, Kayaba, Akihiko, had turned the VR helmets the players used to acess this marvelous world into prisons, trapping the players within the game by removing the log-out button and programming the devices to emit a certain frequency pulse upon death in game to fry the player's real life brain.

At the moment, Kirito, Asuna, and Yuiler were each hoping to prevent one more life being added to the tally of dead players that had built up over the last two years.

Yui, the confused girl that she was, simply acted like the child she appeared as, staring in awe and cheering her "papa" on every time Kirito took on some random Mob within the dungeon.

"We should be getting close to where Thinker's been held up..." Yuiler said as she checked her map of the dungeon, which had several dots superimposed onto it, only one of which was stationary.

"We should keep on guard," Kirito warned as he prepared to draw his two swords- a Unique Skill in the world of Aincrad: **[Dual Blades]**. "We don't know what else could be there."

"Right..." Yuiler smiled slightly at the younger boy. Of note, another thing to mention about SAO is that, on that dreadful day, the Game Master Kayaba transformed each player avatar into the exact appearance of the player on the other side- matching hair color, height, body type, and most disturbingly of all, any scars or birthmarks they might have had in reality as well.

Nobody could figure out how the NervGear, the equipment trapping them, had managed to perfectly mimic their Real Bodies so well. Not even the "Calibration" at the first start up of any NervGear could explain that away.

(In retrospect, Kirito would later think, that was the first sign that there was something fishy about how Kayaba had trapped them all inside SAO.)

As the trio walked down the hallways towards the 'safe area' that Thinker was surely held up in, the sounds of battle suddenly broke out somewhere ahead of them.

The sound of Sword Skills clashing- both the distinctive baritone of a Monster's weapon and the high-pitched hum of a player's skill.

"Yuiler, keep an eye on Yui for us," Kirito drew his swords, Elucidator in the right, and Dark Repulsor in the left, and next to him Asuna drew her rapier. "Asuna and I are going to go ahead and investigate."

"O..Okay." Yuiler nodded, and reached to pull the small girl closer to her, "I'll do my best, Kirito-san."

With a shared nod, the married couple, both of whom still looked to be in their early teens due to their avatars not aging over the two years, advanced towards the sight of the commotion.

**"RRRAAARGHHH!"** Came the battle cry of some monster as another Sword Skill activated.

**"HIYAH!"** Came the cry of what sounded like a player, followed by the activation of a matching Sword Skill.

**"YEAH!" **Then there was another cry, sounding like several voices as one.

Once they rounded the corner, any expectations they had were shattered.

"What...?" Asuna gasped.

Before them was a giant monster- it's red diamond at the top labeling it a Boss titled "The Death Scythe"- that looked like a lighting supported metallic brute version of a grim reaper wielding an energy scythe.

Fighting it... Was a boy- Blond hair and blue eyes that would possibly be normal for some players- wielding some kind of scythe-hammer combination in retaliation. But what drew their attention to him was his clothes.

They looked like nothing seen in Aincrad...

They were simply too normal!

Somehow, the boy currently, had the energy blade of The Death Scythe's weapon caught in the shimmering black metal of his own scythe. The determined look in his eyes, combined with the glow on the blade indicated that...

**"DEMON HUNTER!"**

A Sword Skill fired off of the blade as the boy swung his scythe to the side, twisting the Boss monster's grip on the weapon awkwardly.

But the sword skill didn't seem to follow the blade, instead, it leaped off and flew straight for the glimmering core in the center of the Monster's chest.

**CRACK!**

The Death Scythe roared as he reared backwards in pain- electricity leaping out of his core.

"NOW!" The boy yelled...

And then what looked like a Star themed combining robot jumped out of the shadows, going straight for the metallic reaper's mouth.

"HAH!" The golden thing said as he pried the metal skull's jaw open, and then braced it open with the rather large, pointy shades on his chest. "Time to show you MetalPhantomon who the real scythe master is!" He flung his hands forward into the mouth and summoned some sort of Spirograph looking portal. **"CASCADE RECKONING!"**

From out of the portal came a meteor, just perfectly sized to jam the monster's mouth open permanently. The robot grabbed his shades out of the jaws of the surprised boss monster, and back flipped away. "NOW, YUU!"

The boy, Yuu, disengaged his awkward holding of The Death Scythe's weapon, and did an impossibly high jump into the air, twisting that scythe around so that the flat end was prominent as he raised it up behind him... **"BREATH...!"** It glowed with a Sword Skill- _**"IMPACT!"**_

He brought the hammer down on the meteorite in the Boss monster's jaw...and the giant rock exploded, taking the Boss Monster's head along with it.

Needless to say, when the boy landed on the ground with out a scratch and the Boss monster's decapitated body exploded into the familiar shower of polygons, Kirito and Asuna were shocked.

"Wh...what..." Asuna tried to form a sentence, "what kind of sword skill was that?!"

* * *

_*cue INNOCENCE, TV Size*_

**SWORD ART ONLINE  
VS.  
DIGIMON XROS WARS**

* * *

_*cue Title Theme 2 (Xros Wars)*_

**"The Temporal Dive Machine!"**

* * *

The Console's insides were sparking.

Kirito had no clue what to make of the supposed "Safe Room" that Thinker had been stuck in the last few days other than that it didn't appear very safe. Or at least, it didn't appear so now.

"I thought there might have been something I could do," Thinker was explaining his time spent in the room as they all looked at the ruined state of the formerly pristine room, "so I tried messing with this table, thinking it might do something. All I ever did manage to get it to do was let my tracker positioning come back online, but I couldn't do anything about sending messages or even escaping. I'm not a hacker, after all."

"Just what is it?" Yuiler asked, "I didn't think tables in SAO could be broken like this."

"SAO shouldn't have breakable objects period," Kirito reminded her, "either an **[Immortal Object]** tag would appear or it would shatter into polygons."

"Well, after a while, I think I managed to get it to send a distress signal," Thinker continued, "it locked me out after that and a little before you guys showed up, Yuu here arrived."

"You did send a signal, which I followed back here." The blond haired boy gave a muffled comment from his position half way inside the table, "This is _really_ high tech stuff, by the way! I don't think we had anything close to it back home." There was a short buzzing sound, followed by a gasp of excitement, "Ahha! Found it!"

"He just showed up?" Yuiler asked as she ignored the other boy yanking at something inside of the ruined console, "On foot?"

"No, actually," Thinker shook his head, "it was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen! A shimmering oval of green light just opened up above the table, and then he just walked right out of it!"

"A Corridor Crystal?" Kirito asked aloud.

"Those are blue," Asuna reminded him as she walked back into the room with Yui holding her arm, "or translucent at least, but definitely not green. Also, that Boss monster doesn't seem to have a re-spawn just like the others. We haven't seen any sign of it re-spawning, but I heard more of those frogs we fought on the way down. They've probably all re-spawned by now."

"After he showed up, the Boss Monster outside got really riled up for some reason," Thinker continued on, "then it attacked for the first time since I got in this room, cut the room practically in two with its sword skill. Then Yuu held up some device and that scythe and all those stars came out, and then they all fused together into a robot before they went to fight it!"

"That doesn't sound like anything in SAO's mechanics," Kirito remarked. "He's definitely from the outside if that's the case."

"They're not lying," Yui said with a smile towards him. "They're definitely from the outside."

"Got it!" Yuu called out suddenly as he pulled out of the machine, holding a small silver device in his hand. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you your mystery signaling device: A Xros Time Wrister! And I have no clue how it got here."

* * *

After Thinker and Yuiler teleported out of the dungeon via crystal, Kirito, Asuna, Yui, and their new companion Yuu began the march to the surface on foot.

The tale the boy weaved as they marched back out of the dungeon was a strange one, a twisted tale that held many twists and turns that would suddenly turn back on itself and make it all seem linear again. Although, they had to fight off more of those stupid frogs along the way, which made for relatively well placed breaks in-between the retold adventures.

But to summarize it:

A storm brought a disaster to a child world, and opened a gate, dragging people over to the parent world. There was an empire, and while many in it were corrupt, there were those within the higher ranks that sought to bring about it's end...

An army had been formed long before, but now carried substance, a force behind a name- Xros Heart. That Army fought for the freedom of that parent world, and from there, they took on the Empire toe to toe, eventually uniting with another army, Blue Flare, in a final battle on the Child world.

The Emperor had been betrayed, and his Brother, a usurper, had been punished by both worlds for his actions. The Brother's wish had been granted via this punishment, and forever more would he rule over the two worlds as the single star that both planets shared- eternally exploding for a single moment across all moments of time itself.

However, the source of the storm still existed, and a beast with an unknown plan threatened all of creation- forcing the heroes from various worlds to unite on the Child World from before... All in accordance with the beast's plan.

He planted a destructive creature in the core of the planet- causing an explosion that resulted in the Child World's demise. If not for those who had already survived the event coming back to save those that remained, all would have perished.

The survivors- Xros Heart's United Interdimensional Army- scattered across time and space at that present moment, were hoping to chase the beast down before he could cause any more destruction. They had not escaped death without casualties, however... Many had died. A whole world was forever wiped out of existence, never to return.

And worst of all...there were two who they knew were still alive, but lost to time and space- Xros Heart's chase across the Multiverse was also a rescue mission, should those two be found on one of those worlds.

That had been Two years earlier.

"Even so..." Yuu concluded, "we keep on helping where we can, stopping Quartzmon's plans from ever succeeding... It's obvious he's lured us here with this Wrister, but we can't turn our backs on anyone. That's what Taiki-san would want, anyways..."

"Taiki...he's one of the ones missing, right?" Kirito asked.

"Yeah," Yuu nodded, "Quartzmon shot him, and then Sparrow-san...she just took him up into the sky a little before everything got destroyed."

"Why do that?" Asuna asked, "Wouldn't a hospital have been better?"

"...He was going to regenerate from the shot," Yuu explained after a moment. "Every cell in his body replaced in an instant; but from what Akari-san told us about his last regeneration, it's really violent. Powerful enough to rip a hole in space-time all on it's own, at least. I think Sparrow-san didn't want Quartzmon having any advantages in his plan, so she took him up into space where he could release all that energy safely."

"That's..." Asuna had no clue how to reply to that. "So they're both missing because of that?"

"Somebody that powerful could probably just solo a boss," Kirito mused. "Especially if they can take a killing blow and then just destroy whatever dealt it."

"It's not really all that useful," Yuu commented. "He was pretty out of it for a few weeks after the first one. Sparrow-san ended up helping him work it off somehow, but I don't know how she did it. At the very least, she's probably the best person qualified to help him through it a second time."

Kirito took in the expression on the boy's face as he talked about it all. It was honest, but also somewhat rehearsed. Yuu had probably told this same story many times, if what he said about traveling across time and space was true. He knew when to avoid the parts that made his expression turn sour almost as soon as he began telling it.

Yuu had willingly shown them his **[Xros Loader]**, the strange yellow device that that Star-themed monster had returned into after the battle. It's plastic covering immediately marked it as something from the outside of SAO. There wasn't a material like that anywhere in Aincrad.

Topping the oddity that Yuu presented off was the lack of a Player ID, much like Yui lacked one. Perhaps that was what happened to the little girl? She'd lost her memory being flung into another dimension?

Kirito brought it up at one point during their climb back to the top:

"Can you see the ID markers over our heads?"

"What Markers?"

"Never mind, then."

After that, he opened his inventory and asked Yuu to do the same.

The system didn't respond to the identically mimicked motions.

Yui also couldn't see the ID Markers, or access the system menu, which supported that odd theory as well.

It was Asuna who came up with the next supporting evidence towards that theory, with the realization that Yuu's clothes would stand out in Aincrad. So, Kirito volunteered one of his old coats.

When Yuu simply shrugged it on instead of equipping it like any SAO player would, Asuna sent Kirito a look that told him right away, Yui had changed her clothes manually too, back in their house on Floor 22.

The game mechanics simply didn't connect to them.

* * *

Of course, the moment they'd neared the last corner round to the entrance of the dungeon, the game mechanic concern became a lot more problematic.

"I want those players Found!" Came an irritatingly familiar voice, "Split up if you have to, but I want them found!"

"Kibaou!" Kirito spat under his breath as there was a chorus of "yes Sir"s from the men accompanying the little upstart who had trapped Thinker in the dungeon in the first place. "This isn't good!"

"Scythes aren't a common weapon in this game, are they?" Yuu asked as he looked at his own weapon hesitantly.

"No," Asuna replied, "but it could be a **[Unique Skill]** nobody's heard of yet..."

"They sound mad," Yui remarked quietly as the sound of marching boots began.

"Probably because Thinker got out," Kirito muttered as he prepared to reach for his swords. "Or because we were seen going in. Though their timing could be worse."

Any chance for discussion came to an end as the party of six entered their line of sight.

Kibaou spotted them immediately. "Well, well, what do we have here?"

"Looks like a buncha spies, boss!" One of the armored men remarked with a sinister grin.

"Kibaou," Kirito said flatly, "we were just leaving."

"Like hell you were!" the cactus haired man spat, taking several steps towards the Black Swordsman, "You lousy Beater! I bet you come down here just to grind it all while nobody's looking!"

"I honestly had no idea this place was hear until today," Kirito countered.

"And what's this?!" Kibaou turned towards Yuu, "Some kind of scythe? I bet you're a Beater too!"

Yuu blinked in confusion as Yui asked: "What's a 'beater', Mama?"

"I'll tell you later, Yui-chan," Asuna told the girl.

Kiabou took notice of the little girl, and a scowl formed on his face. Who was she to question... He did a double take along with his five friends. "Asuna The Flash!?" The Five men with Kibaou reacted rather badly upon recognizing her, each of them freezing up in horror.

"Yes, and as Kirito-kun was saying, we were just leaving," Asuna said simply. "We've had enough of this place for one day, thank you." And with that she opened the shared inventory between her and Kirito and dumped all of the frog-legs (for the second time), "We weren't even in it for the items, so if you want them-"

"FORGET IT!" Kibaou snarled and snatched Yuu's scythe out of his possession, "I don't care what measly little insects you've ground to dust- I just want this weapon!"

Yuu let out a hiss at the "insects" comment, and before anyone could question why...

The scythe glowed a bright golden light in Kibaou's hands...and then...

_"THEY ARE _**NOT**_ INSECTS!"_

Before anyone could react, the weapon burst out of the cactus haired man's hands, and shifted into a humanoid form mid air.

_**DIVE KICK! **_

_**CACTUS-MAN SMACK-DOWN! **_

_**ADDITIONAL PUMMELING! **_

After several moments of confusing attacks, the weapon, which had shifted into the form of a girl, now held Kibaou's arms behind his neck in some obscure form of wrestling move... which looked rather painful to Kirito's eyes.

"Now Apologize!" the girl, who had light pink hair (almost to the point of being white), ordered as she twisted one of his arms.

"GYaahhhh...!" Kibaou winced, which highlighted a boot print on his face. "Wh-What are you!?"

"Apologize," the girl twisted the other arm. "NOW."

"N-NEVER!" Cactus hair spat, "Men!" He called out, "Kill theeeem!"

Nothing.

"Men?"

The five men who accompanied Kibaou had already fled the scene, screaming rather loudly about "the scary woman with the kids" from before. Not that Kibaou could see that from where he was, though he could certainly hear them.

"They left," Kirito remarked offhandedly.

"I..." Kibaou gulped, "I'm sorry...?" he didn't know what she wanted an apology for, honestly. Maybe the insects line?

"Now then," Yuu took a step forward, "I think you can let him go now, Corone?"

The girl, Corone, gave a half-hearted eye roll, then let go of Kibaou's arms with a remark of "Good enough." As Cactus-hair fell forward, one could obviously see now that Corone had one of her feet pressed up into his back before by the boot print on the back of his clothing.

"Shall we go then?" Yuu turned towards Kirito and Asuna, who were simply staring on in confusion. Yui, on the other hand, was grinning as brightly as anyone could be, given the circumstances.

Ah, to be a kid.

**22ND FLOOR_ _ _| A SHORT WHILE LATER_ _ _|**

The transport gate remained calm that evening, hardly anyone using it due to the tranquil nature of the 22nd Floor not drawing many visitors who weren't already there.

Then there was a burst of blue light, followed by the whirling sound of a transport. When both light and sound faded, Kirito, with Yui riding on his back, Asuna, and Yuu stood in the center of the platform.

"Wow...that's..." Yuu shook his head, "disorientating? Is that the word?"

"You get used to it after two years," Asuna smiled slightly, "it's kind of funny seeing someone react to it like that, though."

The walk from the dungeon to the Starting City's transport gate had been a quiet and uneventful one, with most people having gone back inside for the night, and those that were out weren't ones for looking at other people. Now, it seemed that the walk from Floor 22's Gate to Asuna and Kirito's house would be just as uneventful.

After the run in with Kibaou's party in the dungeon, however, they were all being careful about what they said until they reached the safety of a private residence.

Nobody wanted the fact that there was a way to jump into SAO from the outside to get out just yet, let alone the possibility of doing the reverse! If Kayaba, SAO's creator and 'god', was as good of a programmer as he claimed to be, then if the player's minds left the server through some external means, what would happen to their bodies in reality?

Would the NervGear fry their brains simply for stepping into another dimension? Or would they be able to log out if they did leave?

Such were the thoughts running through Kirito's and Asuna's minds at this point.

When they reached their little log cabin, Kirito did a perimeter check to see if anyone had followed them. When that turned up a negative, they all entered, and prepared for the conversation that was certainly to follow.

* * *

"If you could get into SAO, what's stopping you from taking the players out of it?" Kirito asked that question.

"Not to be rude or anything, but if Quartzmon's planning something big in this world, not being able to log out of a game is going to seem like a small problem compared to whatever he manages to pull out of his bag of tricks." Yuu explained rather sadly, "He tore apart a whole world just to create a paradox once, I don't want to know what could happen to a place like this."

"I see..." Kirito nodded in understanding, "This is a problem beyond even Kayaba's treachery."

"So..." Asuna started after a moment, "what are you going to do?"

"Probably wander around aimlessly," Corone said as shifted out of her scythe form again. "That's pretty much our standard go-to thing: wander around and just stumble into things."

"Actually, I've been curious about these bosses," Yuu countered, "you mentioned them before, right? So I'd like to see one of them, if that's not too much trouble."

"Then you'll have to wait a bit," Kirito said simply. "The bosses don't re-spawn, so if you want to see one, you'll have to join in on a raid when the next one gets found."

"When will that be?" Yuu asked.

"Probably within the next few days, if the pattern holds up..." Kirito answered. "We'll probably be notified about it despite our requested break, so if you stick around here for a few days, we'll let you know about it."

"Sounds okay to me," Yuu looked to Corone, "what about you?"

"Beats aimlessly wandering," the girl shrugged.

"One condition, however," Asuna spoke up. "If you're going to stay here, could you maybe see if Yui-chan is like you?"

"Huh?" Yuu blinked, "What?"

"She doesn't have an ID Marker, just like you don't," Kirito explained. "I...we think she might have fallen into SAO just like you walked into it."

"I guess it's possible," Yuu looked across the room towards where Yui was playing around with some of the Pickmonz. "I mean, I wouldn't put it past a storm to drop her here randomly, considering some of the other things that have happened with them." He looked to his Xros Loader, "I think I know who could help though."

* * *

**"RELOAD!"** Yuu ordered, and the screen on the Loader flared with a bright green light as a certain Digimon exited the device. **"WISEMON!"**

"Good evening!" The robed 'mon bowed, "It's a pleasure to meet you both."

For the second time that day, Kirito and Asuna were surprised by yet another inter-dimensional oddity.

* * *

Not five minutes later, the living room of the small cottage had become slightly over-run with strange mechanical and electronic devices that had no part of being in SAO. All of these devices had Spirographs painted onto the sides, as well as many stickers of blue arrows randomly splattered over them.

Yui simply stared at all of them in curiosity, while Asuna quickly wished she'd kept her mouth shut so that she could get her living room back. Kirito simply was in awe of the massive system that Wisemon had set up. It was so much more complex than his own computer back home.

After hooking up random looking devices, and pointing a few of them (claimed to be "scanners") at Yui, Wisemon turned the elaborate system on and waited a few moments before one of the machines let loose a ding, and printed out a long scroll of paper.

"And here come the results...!" Wisemon said with a bit of glee as he began shutting down the equipment.

"All of that...?" Corone's eye twitched, "Just for a roll of paper?"

"All of this was in my Xros Loader?" Yuu questioned the scientist, who nodded. "But you've only been in there for a week! How did you get all of that in there in the first place!?"

"I just warped my work space into a card and carried it in when you weren't looking," Wisemon answered as he finally turned to the 'test results' and read them over. "Not that hard, really. The old game system had a similar mechanic originally. I just unpacked that data and..." he trailed off. "Oh. That's curious."

"What is?" Kirito asked, while Asuna got a rather concerned look on her face.

"As far as I can tell, Yui-chan is supposed to be a native part of the _Sword Art Online_ system, however, something unknown caused some major data corruption, resulting in access to her long term memories being scrambled along with access being denied to her original higher tiered functions," Wisemon explained. "Curiously, I am also finding traces of a half-deleted Player ID within her matrix, as if it was used to patch up the corrupted data in a hurry. I could try to correct that memory access damage however, if you'd like? But I'm not sure it would do very much good in unlocking her higher data functions given that those parameters seem to have been overwritten by that Player ID."

Kirito and Asuna looked towards the little girl, who smiled at them.

"Help Yui-chan with her memories, please," Asuna decided.

"It will probably take me a few days to figure a way out to do it safely," Wisemon nodded, "but since we seem to have that time, I don't see any problem with that limit. Such a refreshing change of pace from before! Always having to figure things out on the fly, so much stress!"

**SEVERAL DAYS LATER_ _ _| NOVEMBER 7TH, 2024_ _ _| AINCRAD 48TH FLOOR_ _ _|**

It was the day before that word came in- The Boss of the 75th floor had been discovered, and several players had died just in the scouting mission alone. Kirito and Asuna were called back from their vacation/honeymoon (the fact of which Yuu had been completely caught offguard by) by the commander of the Knights of the Blood Oath guild, and when they were briefed on it, they told Yuu exactly what they had learned, which really wasn't all that much.

The doors had closed on the advanced team, and when they opened again, those players were simply gone. It would be three hours until the already deadly boss fight, and since Yui was still without her memories and Yuu would be joining the two Clearers in the fight, the immediate decision was to find someone to watch the girl during the boss raid.

Kirito and Asuna had decided immediately that it would be a blacksmith named Lizbeth.

"Ohaiyo!" The girl (with matching pink hair and eyes) who greeted them with a wave was this Lizbeth, and much to Yuu's surprise, she looked rather familiar, though he couldn't quite place it just yet. (He figured it was probably more of that "Soul Duplication" stuff caused by the storms.)

Asuna was the one who asked the smith, a long time friend of hers and Kirito's, to watch Yui. Lizbeth agreed to do it, although not without her fair share of friendly joking.

"Geeze, Asuna, not two weeks married, and you've already got a kid!" A sly smile.

"It-It's Not Like That!" A furious blush.

"Uh huh." An 'understanding' nod, followed by a polite smile and a "Of course I'll look after her!"

After that, Lizbeth turned her attention to Yuu, "So who's the new guy? And is that a _**scythe!?"**_

"It's a long story," Kirito said with a shrug, "so, we'll tell you after the boss fight."

"Sure, sure," Lizbeth raised an eyebrow, "Whatever you say, Kirito."

* * *

From that Smith Shop, they teleported up to the 75th floor, and joined the crowd that was going to be a part of the raid.

"Oi, Kirito!" Also a part of it were two others, whom Yuu was introduced to as Klein, of some guild he didn't quite catch the name of, and Agil, a shop keep who wielded a rather large ax.

They too, were caught by surprise of Yuu's signature weapon, and so were many others who saw the boy wearing a coat that they'd once all seen at one time or another on the Black Swordsman Kirito.

All of them were pacified with the answer, "I trained with it in real life, so when I encountered a scythe using monster, I took it," for the mean time, with most simply treating it as an _Outside Skill_ that the game had accepted. (After all, Kirito had his Dual Blades skill that seemed to have come from nowhere.)

Most people, strangely, managed to overlook the lack of a cursor over the boy's head (Or maybe they were just being polite?), although a few gave him stray glances that seemed to think there was something up.

All of this, too, was striking Yuu as familiar for some reason.

When the commander of the KOB, the man called "Heathcliff," arrived, he gave Yuu an odd look that Asuna couldn't recognize as coming from that man before, but then went right ahead and did something even stranger than the potential puzzle Yuu presented.

Heathcliff used a **[Corridor Crystal]** to teleport them all to the Boss room doors.

Kirito explained it, although it seemed like he himself was trying to figure out why, as, "Corridor Crystals are really expensive. Why would he use one so passively when we could simply walk to the dungeon?"

Regardless, they were all there in front of the massive doors, and the boss fight was soon to begin.

Kirito and Asuna broke off into their own party, practically, by telling Heathcliff that if it came down to it, they'd try to save the other over themselves. He didn't blame them on it, though he still kept sending odd looks towards Yuu.

In the end, though, the massive raid group had the door opened, and they entered the rather large chamber.

* * *

The doors slammed shut the moment the last person entered the relatively empty room, the sight of which was giving Yuu a really bad case of de ja vu.

"Where's the boss?" murmurs began to rise up from the group.

And then, someone screamed as they looked up, "IT'S ABOVE US!"

"SCATTER!" another person cried...

And then **[The Skull Reaper]** descended from the rooftops, and Yuu remembered why things were becoming familiar over the last few hours.

* * *

It had all been a dream before. Something he'd had months back, just before one of those anniversary karaoke party's they'd done. Before they knew Quartzmon was a threat.

The dream had been as dreams tend to be: loose, shaky, and unreliable.

Such was the case here. That Dream "The Skull Reaper" had been fought and killed in what he remembered to be a few minutes. Not so here. It had already been a little over fifteen minutes now. Funny, time seems to be more observable when you're trying to hold something back.

Such was the case here. Yuu and Heathcliff were both holding back The Skull Reaper's twin arm blades and their repeated attacks. Where Heathcliff's shield blocked the continual pierce attack, Yuu's scythe continually kept it moving backwards.

Meanwhile, with the front two arms of the skeletal centipede held back, the other party members were free to attack at it from below.

Yuu couldn't see the health bar for the monster at all, but Kirito had kept him, and everyone else who couldn't see it due to the awkward angles of the Boss's construction, by shouting out when it's health reached a critical stage. Usually every third of a HP Bar.

Ten minutes passed after the Fifteen minute mark, and by then they'd managed to trim down two thirds of the second of five bars. This was going slowly- Too slowly. Even when Yuu activated either of Corone's attacks to put that one scythe arm on the defensive, it barely made any progress on the bar.

_'If this were up against_ Time Seven,' Yuu thought briefly, _'could we even put a scratch on it?'_

By another fifteen minutes, the skeletal Boss had hit it's third bar. Then it's reactions changed entirely. The Skull Reaper reared back- all attacks against it putting up "Immortal Object" tags for the few moments that it was undergoing its transformation- and threw its two blade arms out to the side, where they _split_ clean in two, and formed a second set of arms as the coloring of its bone changed from white to a corrupted green, and a good portion of it's lower body simply dissolved away in a shower of green, yellow, and blue polygons. Completing the transformation off was a familiar lump growing on the forehead of the transformed Boss monster- directly on the center was a lime green hourglass in a red circle.

"What the-?!" Yuu heard the man Heathcliff gasp in surprise as it did this. In fact, most of everyone there gasped as well. It was pretty much safe to say that this was not what anyone was expecting from this boss- or rather- a Quartzmon Tower.

All movement seemed to stop as The Skull Reaper let loose a roar very different from the chattering sounds it had made before and then threw it's left arms towards Heathcliff while holding it's right arms back in reserve for some strange reason.

The man's shield barely caught the attack- but such was the force behind those spindly arms that he went flying across the room.

Nobody knew what to make of this- but only Yuu had to focus on it now. The Skull Reaper seemed to have changed from "Kill Everyone at once" mode to "Kill one at a time" mode, and now that Heathcliff was seemingly incapacitated, the Boss was turning towards the _other_ person who had been on the defensive to keep it at bay.

_"Yuu!"_ Corone's voice cut through the air from the scythe, and he leaped to action.

**"DEMON HUNTER!"**

Much like had been demonstrated earlier in the battle, a wave of energy shot out and hit The Skull Reaper square in the shoulder, making it reel back with an un-earthly pain-filled scream.

Unlike before, however, a slightly larger portion of health bar diminished from that strike, not that many had noticed it. Klein had, and so he launched a Sword Skill as well- striking The Skull Reaper in one of it's remaining fifty legs.

"It's Weaker!" the guild master shouted when a larger portion of the HP bar dropped.

They all got the point then.

And so, as Yuu began jumping away, trying to dodge the Boss's enraged, four armed attacks, the other Players of the clearing group began launching their Sword Skills- each of them noting that their attacks were causing progressively more damage.

Within two minutes, the third Health Bar was depleted, and the fourth began to drain.

Another minute after that, the fourth was down to 25%.

And another minute after _that_, the boss was finally down to half-health remaining on its final bar- the red zone- and The Skull Reaper lost the use of it's legs (they dissolved away into those oddly colored polygons right out from under it), sending it sprawling forward, only able to support itself with its second set of arms.

It began to flay about wildly, swinging its arms left and right and all around, all in an attempt to hit the little targets around it.

This must have been its third stage: "Stay away from me!" mode.

Not that anyone cared.

With the boss limited in its attack range, it was fairly easy to avoid those wild swings, and soon The Skull Reaper was down to 15%.

Everyone unleashed their highest Skills then- With many leaping into the air to strike down at the beast from above.

Yuu, of course, targeted the monster's annoying forehead mark- smashing it to pieces with one **Breath Impact** strike.

And then, with that combined final strike, The Skull Reaper exploded into a shower of the correctly colored Blue Polygons.

**"CONGRATULATIONS!"** the System told them all with a proud banner.

As the crowd began to sigh in relief, the clearing party began taking stock of the damages...

"Just under an hour to defeat it," Kirito said after glancing at the time, then towards the floor map: "Five dead."

"We've got six in critical!" Someone added to the damage count, "Someone get me healing potions stat!"

Adding to that insane amount of damage to the party, three more were unconscious from blows received from the boss that sent them hurtling into the walls- one of them being the KOB commander Heathcliff.

All in all, 14 people- Four. Teen. People- were out of commission after that fight. Five of them never to return.

The 75th floor's clearing would soon pass through the lower floors, and everyone would cheer at another floor being cleared, along with rumors beginning to circulate about a mysterious Scythe master who had joined this floor's battle.

Although one who heard the news about this...Well...

He wasn't happy at all.

* * *

Quartzmon snarled slightly as streaks of green lightning zipped past him in time-space. "Only the Amano boy came?! Where the hell are the others!?"

The Cascade of Misfortune was catching up to this universe. His plan of distraction relied on more of Xros Heart being in the S.A.O. universe: that created castle "Aincrad."

But no! Only the Amano boy was in the Castle!

Quartzmon peered into the Castle's mother Dimension: The Earth that spawned multiple worlds from its core- that "Seed" program. "Ah..." So that was where some of them were.

A small group from the Core Worlds were there, some of them temporal duplicates of themselves! "What are they doing there?"

It was the Heroes from what had become known to him as "The Adventure Template Dimension." Those so called "Digidestined" or "Chosen Children." Bah, how pathetic. Couldn't they come up with a better name? But no, the universe seemed fit to continually taunt him with those phrases, throwing them into dimensions whose heroes didn't even fit that description!

A spark of temporal energy caught his attention, and Quartzmon turned to follow it.

He couldn't get too close at the moment, but at this distance it appeared to be a future version of himself trying to pull the Castle out of another dimension. How had that happened? Hmf, he supposed he'd find out eventually. But still...

"Worry-some." Quartzmon noted.

But it gave him an idea.

"Moving the castle across dimensions?" he chuckled as he took the flow of time back to that time when he was free to meddle, before casually slipping in the designs for a Temporal Engine into the top floor of Aincrad and completely overhauling the designs of the 76th floor onward up to that last floor.

He suddenly had a new plan.

* * *

**[The 76th Floor]** was unlike anything they'd expected.

There was no sky- for one thing.

It was all pipe work and rusted metal and unfinished structures.

No **[Mobs]** had been found yet at all during the initial scouting of this new floor.

It was as if the **[Designers]** had left the floor in disrepair, as if not even expecting the players to make it this far.

For the next few hours- the **[Clearing Party]** cautiously explored the new floor- trying to find the **[Root Town]** for that floor.

This was the scenario that Kayaba, Akihiko,- A.K.A. **[Heathcliff]** had awoken to.

He was just as confused as everyone else.

_'I did not design this.'_ For the first time in his life- Kayaba found himself scared and worried.

The discovery of this new floor had left him trapped within the game like the players before him- though in a different sense of "Trapped."

He had no threat of death- as he had once claimed- from the Nerv Gear devices- however, the fact that he could no longer log out from his own **[Game Master Console] **left him in a worry-some state.

Death from starvation was a very real concern for him now- but beyond that- the fact that his own custom designed floor plan was changed was a more startling fact.

The Game Had Changed.

The 75th Floor Boss had several different forms, according to the players that had been left to wait for him to wake up, something that he'd never programmed into it.

Kayaba found himself wondering what had caused these changes and how it had slipped past his notice. But- for the time being- he would search for answers alongside the players.

* * *

The 76th Floor was completely empty, Kayaba realized rather quickly. The entire place was a **[Safe Zone]**, no monsters could spawn within at all.

There were no NPCs, no quests, nothing.

The entire Floor was a giant wasteland of machines and structures without purpose.

It was soon after the fourth day on that floor that **[The 77th Floor]** Gates had been found- curiously abandoned by the Boss he'd placed there to guard it.

This, Kayaba grimaced, was not good at all.

The 77th Floor itself was a delightful change of pace with exactly one regard:

The floor's roof was turned on- displaying an idle, flickering, pale blue light upon an otherwise identical floor.

This too- deviated from Kayaba's plan.

Something was very, very wrong.

* * *

The 77th Floor Dungeon tower was locked from the outside- prompting the first system based message that had been seen on those two floors- "Locked By Quest."

Obviously- there was something on those two individual floors that was needed to be found before they could progress further.

**THREE DAYS LATER_ _ _| SOMEWHERE ON FLOOR 76_ _ _|**

The 76th Floor continued to be explored in tandem with The 77th Floor.

Yet still, no monsters had appeared in either, not even in what were clearly dungeons-to-be. The system seemed to refuse to acknowledge their presence within the world on that floor at all.

Yuu Amano found that it was a fitting change to the scenery with his arrival into the game.

At the moment, he, Kirito, Asuna, the blacksmith Lizbeth, and the young girl Yui were exploring a small portion of the strange floor together- hoping to see if this fit any of Yui's scattered memories of "a Dark Place."

"It's familiar...and yet...different," Yui shook her head. While Wisemon's data treatments had seemed to stabilize Yui's existing memories, to the point of being able to recall them rather well, most of her past still seemed locked awya.

And so they explored on.

"This reminds me of the underworld of Sweets Zone," Wisemon had commented at one point when he'd come out to investigate a strange object. (Lizbeth had reacted rather humorously upon first seeing him.)

* * *

Meanwhile, on the 77th Floor- a door was found- and through that door, a console filled with leavers and buttons- and at the center of it all was a strange keyboard with an oddly shaped button.

It looked like a blue rectangle.

The Questers who found it pressed the button and hoped for the best.

* * *

_**GONG.**_

A deep bell resonated across the 76th floor- and Yui looked up at the roof in surprise.

"That sound...!" her tiny hands clenched into fists.

"Yui-chan?" Asuna asked of the girl moments before.. "YUI-CHAN!"

Yui was running through the buildings and machines towards some unseen destination.

"Quick! After her!" Kirito took off.

"Right!" Yuu and Asuna were off after them in a heart-beat.

Soon- Yui found a door- a sealed door- a locked door- and was pounding her fists against it. "We've got to get in here! We've got to get in!"

The door had only one obvious way of opening it: A dent in the wall shaped like a Xros Loader as seen from the back.

"What the heck?" Yuu frowned, "How can that be here?"

"We've got to get in!" Yui insisted- continuing to pound against the door as if her life depended on it.

"Yuu," Kirito looked to the other boy, "Maybe you should...?"

"Right," Yuu nodded, and pulled out his Xros Loader.

By the time Lizbeth caught up to them- she was panting from exhaustion- "Geeze! What's with the **AGI** stats on you guys?"

It was at that moment that Yuu pushed his Xros Loader into the shape in the door- and it activated- the top piece extending up into the door itself and out of sight. A second later- the Digivice beeped in confirmation- and it retracted it's top before floating out of the door in a faint sphere of yellow light.

Yuu caught his Xros Loader just as a crack and a rumble resounded from the door- and it slid backwards into the wall before descending into the floor.

"Woah," Lizbeth stared at it, "That's something you don't see every day."

A light flickered on just inside the tunnel- and then another just further down. More could be heard activating, but they couldn't be seen at that distance.

"I guess we go in then," Kirito drew his two swords, just in case something lay inside ready to attack them.

* * *

The tunnel seemed to go on for quite a while before they finally found what was at the end- a moderately sized room similar to the one that Thinker had been trapped in.

The only differences were the shape (Circular), the Lighting (pitch black otherwise, excluding a faint blue glow covering the room), and the contents of the room (the objects providing the blue glow).

What were those objects?

Twin glass pillars of oxygenated liquid flowing up into the roof from the floor- and inside those pillars were two children, of approximate age to Yui- a boy and a girl.

"What...?" Asuna approached the pillar containing the girl, "Who are these two?"

"Cardinal," Yui spoke up as she stared at the two pillars, "the representations of the twin servers controlling this world." She took a step towards the two trapped children, and muttered, "But how...? They shouldn't have a presence here..."

"Yui," Kirito had to ask, "how do you know that?"

"I don't...But I do..." Yui reached a hand towards the pillar containing the boy, "I think I'm their little sister...or maybe a daughter...?" the girl frowned, "No...Definitely a sibling. They...I fell like they..."

"They shouldn't be in there, right?" Yuu asked, staring at the pillar containing the girl, completely shocked at how much she looked like the human form of a certain Flute playing PawnChessmon's human form. Every last detail in the face right down to the curls in the hair. "Like they should be somewhere else, right?"

"Exactly..." Yui nodded, "they shouldn't be in here."

"Alright then," Yuu nodded, stepping towards the pillars as he drew his scythe from his back, "I'll cut them out with a glass targeting wavelength."

"Wait, don't you think we should-!" Lizbeth was cut off as a single cry filled the air.

**"DEMON HUNTER!"**

The glass tubes cracked from the impact of the glass-targeting wavelength- and moments later the entire things shattered into polygons, flooding the room with the oxygenated liquid, and dropping the two children down onto the grated floor of their tubes.

And so- as Kirito and Asuna stepped in to pull the two children out of the tubes, Quartzmon smirked as he watched them from just outside the dimensional wall.

_"Exactly as planned,"_ he chuckled as he stepped his fingers in front of his nose and mouth.

* * *

The moment they got the two children out of the tunnels- now dressed up in dryer clothing that Lizbeth had lying around- the door behind them closed suddenly- and a familiar bell toned across all of Aincrad.

On every floor thus far- a familiar red screen stretched across the sky: **[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT.]**

* * *

Nobody was teleported- Heathcliff was visibly relieved by this- but the simple fact of the matter was that he was not the one that had summoned this message.

_"Ahhem, ahhem, Testing, One Two Threee..."_ A voice spoke from everywhere at once.

* * *

Yuu's eyes narrowed, "That can't be..."

"It's not Kayaba," Kirito said instantly.

_"Hello, everyone, and Welcome to __**[Sword Art Online]**_,_ Players."_ the voice said, _"Where __**[Death] **__in this world means __**[Death] **__in the Real World. As you already know..."_

Lizbeth stared up at the glowing red roof above them with wide, fearful eyes. Why was this happening again?

_"The only way out of Sword Art Online is to __**[Clear]**__ all __**[100 Floors].**__"_ The voice paused to laugh, _"Oh, but forgive my rudeness, I've yet to introduce myself."_

Yuu grit his teeth, "Quartzmon."

_"My name is __**[Quartzmon]**__, and I, as you might have been able to tell,"_ there was a laugh, _"have __**[Dethroned]**__ your __**[Game Master]**__, Kayaba, Akihiko!"_

* * *

Kayaba grit his teeth. "What the hell is this?" he asked to nobody in particular.

_"I'll let you in on a little secret."_ Quartzmon said, _"He was never actually in complete control of this world. And, furthermore, he has no idea of this fun fact that I'm about to lay down upon you all..."_

* * *

"Quartzmon," Yuu frowned, "just what the hell is your game here?"

_"The __**[NervGear]**__ that allowed you to access this game was modified by none other than me to include a molecular deconstruction device. But what's that, you ask?"_ Quartzmon chuckled, "SURELY_ you've noticed by now, after two years! Your bodies are too perfectly copied! Details that should be impossible to collect on an avatar are there! Scars and birthmarks...And haven't you noticed your 'avatars' aging either?"_

"Is he saying what I think he's saying?" Asuna asked. "That our bodies here are our real bodies?"

"I think he is..." Kirito's eyes widened.

_"AHAHAH! Oh man, this is really rich! You should see the looks on your faces! Haha! I think I'll screen capture this and send you all a copy of your faces right this moment!"_ Quartzmon's sentence was punctuated by the ping of an incoming message to every player at once.

"How the heck...?" Liz took a step back away from the picture message she'd just opened. "That's us! Right here and now...!"

* * *

_"Alright, fun's over. Time for me to put it all down on the line for you folks."_ Quartzmon's laughter died down. _"The rules are the same- you still have to clear all 100 Floors inorder to exit the game...But there's something more here that you should be aware of..."_ Quartzmon's voice took on a sinister tone. _"The way back to your world isn't through any log out button, no."_

Kayaba grit his teeth at this.

_"As of a minute ago- two groups of players on two separate floors simultaneously removed the locks that the __**[Cardinal System]**__ that runs this game put in place to prevent my little surprise form working. Congratulations! You've just completely screwed over every world in existence!"_ Quartzmon's voice held a mocking tone there.

* * *

"Oh my god, what did we do?" A player, the one who pressed the blue button, asked as they cradled their head. "What did we DO?!"

* * *

_"The way out of this _'game'_ is simply powering up the __**[Temporal Dive Machine]**__ at the 100th Floor's __**[Scarlet Jade Palace]**__, and entering a string of coordinates to a certain universe."_ Quartzmon continued. _"I know at least ONE of you knows what I'm talking about."_

Yuu's eyes widened slightly.

_"But you see...Aincrad is under _**MY**_ control now."_ Quartzmon emphasized the "my" so heavily it echoed through the streets and floors. _"The Cardinal System itself has been disconnected as part of it's own counter measures of preventing my little plans! HAH! How lame and foolish can you GET to even fall for my _obvious_ fake out like that? HUH _**Cardi-chan**_? That leaves me in control of this world. And that leaves _**ME **_in the position of power."_

"Cardinal...?" Yui frowned, glancing at the rescued twins. "These two were...?"

_"I have complete control of the system commands, and the Temporal Dive Machine itself."_ Quartzmon continued on, _"And as my first order of business to kick off this game proper, I'll be pulling us out of this pocket universe and into the __**[Untempered Schism]**__ itself! Just to prove to all you _Nay Sayers_ that I'm serious here."_

* * *

The entire castle of Aincrad shook violently as the Scarlet Jade Castle on top of pulsed with a crimson aura.

There was a massive grinding sound as the entire world around the castle seemed to fade away... almost like a key being scraped over a piano wire.

The Castle pulsed three times- as the endless orange clouds became replaced by the endless void of space-time itself with each pulse.

When the shaking stopped- and everyone found themselves still on solid ground...

* * *

Quartzmon continued on. _"There. See? I'm absolutly serious here. So tell you what! I'll give you all a sporting chance. Two months to clear the rest of Sword Art Online and reach this castle that I now call home. You do that and you can guarantee that the next leap will be the one back to your little blue ball of water called Earth."_

Yuu stared at the red screens in disbelief. Was Quartzmon REALLY going to give them a chance to-?

_"It's this damn mainframe. Keeps itching and bugging and fussing about keeping things __**[Fair]**__! BLECK."_ Quartzmon seemed to be repulsed by that thought.

"Okay," Yuu said aloud, "That answers that question."

_"BUT! If you all don't pull it together in time and get up here? Well...I'm going to take this baby on a test run and...well...Let's just say your earth won't exactly look the way you left it when I get through with it. Consider it a new Quest to complete..Oh wait! It is!"_

* * *

Kayaba stared down at the newly appeared item on the **[Quest List]** with a subtle smirk on his face. Hah! The Cardinal System got it's revenge even if it had been disconnected. The **[Game Balance]** had been preserved even after such a massive upheaval! There was still a chance to end this peaceably and without further blood shed!

_"So yeah, that's it! Happy hunting and all that jazz,"_ A piece of Quartzmon's voice seemed to _twitch_ at that. _"Not __**[Smooth Jazz]**__, however. There will be NO Smooth Jazz being played at all during the course of this Quest at all! DO YOU HEAR ME!? __**NO SMOOTH JAZZ. **_**AT ALL!"**

Everyone stared up at the screens incredulously at that.

* * *

_"Smooth move, GLaDOS,"_ Corone muttered.

_"AHHEM."_ Quartzmon coughed- _"that is all!"_

And with a _-BLOOP-_, the red screens all vanished, leaving Aincrad in silence.

"Well." Yuu said after a moment. "I think we might have a chance to stop this after all."

* * *

**EARTH: #S-404-Lo-FPT**

**NOVEMBER 11TH, 2024.**

**12:08 A.M. JAPAN STANDARD TIME.**

* * *

Meanwhile- in an office building on the Earth that had spawned Sword Art Online...

...A man stared at a computer monitor that was the only source of light in the night time room.

If all things had gone according to plan, the man's partner had just successfully taken control over Sword Art Online's entire structure: AINCRAD. **A**_n_ **INC**_rinating_ **RAD**_ius_.

The man giggled to himself even as dreams of forgotten realities flooded his memory. "_Kayaba_..." He hissed, "Oh how I wish I could have seen that look of surprise on your real face..."

That man had been an utter genius, the man thought, to have made technology that could suck you into a game body, soul, and mind. Nobody in the world's governments could understand how it was possible.

One moment they were there.

**BWOOSH**.

The next?! The man giggled- They were gone!

_**GONE! **_

...Gone gone gone! No longer in existence. _They had CEASED to be_! They were EX-People!

Now only players of a game of a game of _**a game**_!

**A GAME.**

**...King **_**Oberon s**__at _on his _**ThRoNe.**_

The insane man giggled even more. None knew of his plans. Not even the backers that supplied him with the

_**...Yuuduro**_

_COIN._

Cash to fund his

Project

**...[EXPERIMENT]**

Video Game- _**ALFHEIM ONLINE**_

_Home of the Faries_

...FLY! FLY my preeties... FLYYYY!

Knew what he was planning. They would see, they would all see-

_Crackers? No that is not my name._

**..."I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!"**

...Maybe. Wait. No. Impossible. Can't be.

_**STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP**_

"...Ehhheeee..." The man clamped his hands over his ears and giggled to himself. Not even his boss-

**I WANT HIM TO BE MY FATHER. MY REAL FATHER. NOT THE-**

_...She hates me she hates me she'll never marry me unless I can convince him to-_

But she's inside the game. She could be dead.

"He'll hate me if she's dead."

Knew of the depths of his insanity. Only the magic man. The Crystalline being.

**Quartzmon.**

_"I know what it's like, dear Sugou, to be thought of as insane by those around me."_

_"What? how?"_

_"I've dealt with it personally, you could say."_

_**TORMENT. TORTURE.**_

**DROW SN'WO Y'MNOG'NILL A' FYBE'ID**

Only He understood. Only HE knew how it felt...How to hide it and how to manipulate it to his own ends and purposes and-

He's going to betray you, you know.

...NO NO NO NO **NONONONONO! **_**NOT **_**LISTENING!**

What makes you think he'll follow his end of the bargain and even deliver you the girl?

The Castle?

The Players?

**...THE CEO RUSE IS A DISTACTION!**

**...I *HAVE* THE LEVERAGE!**

You're truly insane, you know, if you believe anything inside your own head at this point.

"LALALALALALALA! I AM NOT LISTENING!"

He cringed at the light and the flickering lines of text on the screen- reeling backwards and stumbling away from the chair even as the thoughts possessed his mind.

You don't know who you're up against.

Who HE has brought down upon you.

**...*I* am the one in control.  
...CoNtRoLl.  
...CONTROL  
...control  
...HoNk.**

Why does he bother with you? Don't you realize that you're making yourself an easy mark? Someone who will be easily controlled instead of being the one who-

_**"SHUT UP!"**_ he shouted, reaching into his pocket for the solution. **"SHUT UP SHUT UP!"**

Medicine can't cure your kind of insanity.

_**"I SAID SHUT UP!"**_

The man swallowed the magic potion and counted backwards...

Ten...Nine

...8

7

...6

Five... FoUr...

THREE

...two

"One..." Noboyuki, Sugou, stood alone in his empty office once more, and took a deep breath before exhaling slowly. He ran his hands through his tussled hair and composed himself.

He glanced at the clock: just after midnight. No wonder his mind had begun to slip. These late night workings on his secret project had lead to him slipping up on his finely crafted schedule.

He hated the voices.

His associate knew well what kind of madness this was. And a cure was promised. A cure not of this world. But of another.

As the Director of the Research Institute of RECTO Progress Inc., he had to investigate any and all possibilities into these worlds.

Even if they were Digital.

His associate- Quartzmon- assured him that digital cures were just as valid as physical ones, especially since computer data could take on a physical form.

The insanity that had gripped him moments before faded away into the depths of the night, and Sugou took deep breaths to push it even further away.

Soon- he would Rescue Asuna Yuuki from the castle, and her father- his boss- would allow her to marry him.

If she were still alive, that was.

He had to wait for his associate to finish preparing the game from the inside for his eventual take over. The conversion from a Castle to a **[War Machine]** was a long one. It would take just shy of Two Months after this critical juncture. Or at least, it would if Quartzmon couldn't get the Temporal Dive Machine working in time.

A time machine.

A Time Castle.

A Time Traveling Castle that could destroy entire

_**...WORLDS.**_

"No." He took a breath- keeping the insanity at bay. He wouldn't let his sanity slip at this critical juncture.

He had plans.

Quartzmon had plans.

And the next step was secretly activating the molecular transmitters inside the AMUSpheres that had been specifically designed to NOT have those devices in them. But when he was in charge of production, design, supply, and demand- anything could get past those pesky "Security Checks" with the right amount of money.

Sugou straightened his tie out, and turned to turn off the computer.

"Hello, again."

Sugou froze at the voice behind him. Moments away from shutting down the computer, Sugou stopped and turned to see who it was that had just spoken.

He knew- of course- who it was.

It was the boy who was his Associate's Middle Man: Ryouma Mogami. However- in the limited lighting of the room from the computer- he looked just as spooky as Quartzmon had in their first encounter.

"Oh, it's you, Mogami," Sugou took a moment to compose himself- of course it would be this boy. Who else would suddenly appear at this hour? "What do you want?"

"Just to confirm that our arrangement is still on track?" Ryouma inquired. "On your end, I mean."

"O-Of course," Sugou paled slightly. Recreating the **[SAO Incident]** within ALO would be tough, but it could be done. "I'll have everything ready by new years. We'll be ready to deploy on schedule during the peak hours of the new Quest Event in January."

"Good, good," Ryouma smirked. "With that out of the way, I'm allowed to let you know that, baring any more third party interference, Aincrad has been caputred, and will be delivered on schedule once the conversions are complete."

"That's good to know," Sugou frowned. "Wait, what do you mean by 'any more'?"

"A troublesome boy has managed to enter Sword Art Online," Ryouma explained, "one Yuu Amano from another dimension. We were expecting a larger group to appear for us to trap within Aincrad during the take over, but the Amano boy seems to have come alone for the moment. If he has allies with him, they've remained hidden and we can't track their whereabouts at the moment." He checked his watch, "But, that shouldn't matter at any rate. We've had a back up plan in place since he appeared. With any luck, the ones caught in that trap will be erased with a doomed timeline, and the interlopers who would put an end to our schemes will be disorganized to the point of never being able to form a resistance to your glorious descent to power."

"Don't you mean ascent?" Sugou asked.

"...Yes," Ryouma smirked, "I did."

And with a burst of static- the boy vanished from the room- leaving Sugou alone once more with his thoughts.

After a moment- Sugou opened up the bottle for his medicine and took another dose, just to be on the safe side.

* * *

**JANUARY 8TH, 2025.**

**KIRIGAYA HOUSE HOLD.**

**4:13 P.M.**

* * *

Suguha Kirigaya- Kazuto Kirigaya's younger sister- stared at the empty NervGear laying on her brother's bed for what seemed to be the millionth time that decade.

Two years ago, 10,000 players were literally sucked away into Sword Art Online, held ransom by the madman Kayaba Akihiko- whose sole demand was that, if the players families wished to see their loved ones alive and well again, that they leave the NervGear plugged in and running or else when the game was cleared that the players who attempted to return suddenly find that they would have no way to return and their bodies forever trapped within SAO's servers.

Some foolish people had disregarded that advice and thrown the accursed devices away- or damaged them irreparably. And although it was not yet confirmed if such things would actually prevent a player's return- the sudden disappearance of the SAO server data had rendered the point of leaving the devices on moot.

At the same time as the 75 floor had been cleared, the website for SAO had ceased updating its current stats board under the Admin account name "Heathcliff", and instead had begun updating under the moniker "Q", first posting a vague timer limit that would be expiring on this very day, followed by continuing to update the stats of the game.

The floors had begun to be cleared faster than ever- and many theorists suspected that a rogue agent had hacked into the game server and transfered the data elsewhere- out of the public eye.

Every NervGear had been kept watch with on that day- everyone hoping that their loved ones would return from the game by the time the timer reached Zero.

Suguha held no such concerns for today. "Wish me luck, Onii-chan," she said before turning with a flourish to head towards her own room.

Despite the damage to the VRMMO Genre that SAO had done in the first year- the release of "AMUSphere", a similar device that was made without the molecular transportation devices that had pulled every SAO player into the game, brought about a boom in the game industry.

Before the SAO Server and Game data had vanished, two new VRMMOs had come out on the first year anniversary, with their physics engines and graphics ripped straight from Sword Art Online.

Those two games were the Japanese Exclusive game **[ALfheim Online]**, and the Internationally released, USA born game **[Gale Gun Online]**.

Suguha had joined ALfheim Online due to it's fantasy setting being closer to what Sword Art Online had promised- she had wanted to understand what had drawn her brother into the game that now held 10,000 people hostage.

Over the year that followed- Suguha, as the **[Sylph Swordswoman Leefa]**, had become drawn into the politics of the game and became one of the top ranked Sylph players due to her kendo skills.

Skills that had placed her and another player, whom she'd known in real life and had actually introduced her to the game, named **[Recon]** at the top of the Sylph Government as bodyguards for the elected leader.

Suguha entered her room, and donned the AMUSphere, gazing up at the poster that Recon had had printed from a screenshot he'd taken as a birthday present for her. It was a weird angle- having been taken mid-flight during one of their first missions- of her avatar from behind as she looked over her shoulder and laughed at Recon's poor flight skills.

Even despite the unflattering angle Recon had taken the picture in, it reminded Suguha why she played the game- and who she was inside of it.

Long blond hair- green eyes- translucent wings over a green cape- The Swordswoman Leefa.

**"Link Start."** Suguha said quietly- and a flash of colored lights later-

* * *

**VALLEY OF BUTTERFLIES**

**14:13 ALFHEIM STANDARD TIME**

**8TH OF FIRST MOON- 1806.**

* * *

Leefa opened her eyes and sat up inside the tent she'd left her avatar in that morning.

With a yawn and a stretch- Leefa got to her feet and climbed out of the tent.

"Ah, Leefa-san," An older Sylph Woman- the Farie Lord Sakuya- smiled at her, "I was wondering when you'd wake up."

"I had to take care of some things first," Leefa appologized, bowing slightly. "Asking my brother for good luck in this..."

"Ah, right," Sakuya nodded- understanding immediately. "Well, then, let's get started?"

"Right."

* * *

The **[Cait Sith - Sylvain Alliance]** was being held in neutral territory. Both Races would be working together to take a run at the **[World Tree Quest]**, but it would take time, patience, and money to fund such an expedition.

Very rarely did the Farie Lords leave their capital citys- for fear of being **[Assassinated]** by another Race, and having their towns and players free to being raided and taxed by that assasinating race.

These two Lords, however, the Sylvain leader Sakuya and the Cait Sith leader **[Alicia Rue]**, had no reason to distrust the other- being friends in the **[Dream World]** that was, sadly, the **[Real World].**

The in-game alliance was just a formality, in this case, to allow the game system to accept the alliance between the races, when all the terms had been discussed by the friends in the real world, free of espionage and threat of death.

However- Leefa had a bad feeling about this meeting.

Too many Sylph Raids had been targeted by the most aggressive of the Nine Races- the **[Salamanders]**. If there was a spy among the Sylph ranks who was leaking such information, then surely that spy would have leaked information of the meet to the Salamanders.

That had been the reason why Leefa had brought so many Sylph guards that she knew were not spies and could trust completely to guard the meet- and had insisted her counterpart in Cait Sith security do the same.

If the Salamanders were to attack- this would be the perfect chance to take out two races at once.

The alliance terms were spelled out and the contracts written up in-game for the first time.

Everyone anticipated the moment of signing...

Leefa- however- was distracted by an ingame message that had appeared suddenly.

**[Leefa! Danger! Sigurd Betraye-]**

The Message ended abruptly, and then she heard it.

Buzzing.

The beat of thousands of wings.

Up in the sky directly to the south was the entire Salamander raid forces- led by General Eugene, wielder of the unblock-able **[Demonic Sword Gram]**.

Leefa readied her sword, a katana by choice, and the other guards did the same. "Sakuya-san, Alicia-san," she said, "run while we hold them off. Sign the treaty mid flight if you can...!"

"I don't think we'd be able to get that far, Leefa-nyan," Alicia said sadly. "There's too many of them...!"

"Attention, Sylphs and Caits," Eugene said softly, and yet loudly to all thanks to the skill **[Speaker's Voice]**, as he drew his sword and leveled at them, "surrender now or we will be forced to kill you all."

"Yeah, right!" Leefa shouted, "Like hell you'd let us live with this massive army!"

Eugene narrowed his eyes, and opened his mouth to speak when a Salamander cried out from behind him.

_**"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?"**_

Everyone in the Salamanders were looking up to the north- high up behind the gathered Sylphs and Cait Siths...

Leefa took a risk- she glanced over her shoulder towards the World Tree.

What she saw made her very, very confused.

Everyone knew that in the following days, a new game update was coming, along with the release of a new Quest Tree Line to go along with it...

But this was too soon for it to happen.

Too soon.

And it didn't fit at all.

It was a massive, dark purple storm cloud that was high up above the World Tree, swirling around just above it like a massive hurricane turned upside down.

Lightning zapped out of the forming eye of the storm- blue in color- as a massive grinding sound filled the air- echoing from the storm from the center of ALfheim to the furthest edges of the Continent.

And then something began to descend from the storm.

It was vaguely egg shaped- with massive protrusions from the bottom sticking out to the side that looked like a bunch of arms holding swords.

It was metallic in color- almost bronze if not for the silver reflections coming off of it- and the top of it was pulsing red.

A Scarlet Jade Castle.

"That's...!" A Sylph shouted in surprise, "That's Aincrad!"

"That's the castle from SAO!" A Cait Sith seconded.

"What the hell!?" A Salamander shouted- "What's that doing here!? How did it even-?"

And then the castle came to a stop just above the branches of the World Tree by letting off a pulse of energy that dispersed the storm above it.

Silence fell over ALfheim...

Moments later- Leefa felt the air currents change just before the shock wave from the pulse ran over them all- scattering the air-born Salamanders to the wind, and forcing everyone on the ground to hunker down to weather out the ride.

And so- as calm fell over the Valley of Butterflies once more, Leefa got to her feet and stared out at the new addition to the game with wide eyes.

And then...

Leefa started laughing.

Alicia Rue stared at the girl for a moment, before she started laughing too.

Soon- the laughter spread to everyone else at the summit as the absurdity of the situation sunk in.

An alliance had been saved by a Castle from another video game appearing out of thin air.

"Onii-chan!" Leefa cried out through her laughter. Somehow, just SOMEHOW, she knew that her brother had done this. _**"THANK YOU!"**_

**TO BE CONTINUED IN:**

_**THE HOWLING CASTLE MOVES!**_

* * *

**A.N.: Heheh...hahahaha...AHAHAHAHAHAH! **

**Man, needs to have a RIGHT aligned feature. Sugou's Insanity section looks SO Much better with three alignment types. When I get to Live blogging this on_ A-Xros Time and Space_, I'll have to adjust that for you all to read in it's truly insane glory! :33**

**That said- this was the fastest X0VA i've put out to date. Must be because I've been working on it off and on since I started the X0VAs... Heh. Had it half finished by the time I got to X0VA-5. ^u^ _DTC**


	2. The Howling Castle Moves!

**AINCRAD: 98TH FLOOR.**

**JANUARY 5TH: 2025.**

**6:42 P.M.**

* * *

_SWISH! SLASH! SLICE!_

A **[Demon Mogual]** exploded into polygons, and Kirito sighed in relief at the last mob of the day being cleared.

"Let's go home," He said.

"Un," his wife, Asuna, nodded. "Yui-chan'll be waiting for us."

And so, as they pulled out the **[Mark Location Transport Crystals]**, Kirito glanced about the Dungeon and sighed.

_'Two months later, and it's hard to believe how things have changed.'_

**"TELEPORT! HOME!"**

* * *

_*cue INNOCENCE, TV Size*_

**SWORD ART ONLINE  
VS.  
DIGIMON XROS WARS**

* * *

_*cue Title Theme (Xros Wars)*_

**"X0VA-8! THE HOWLING CASTLE MOVES!"**

* * *

In the Two Months that had passed since Quartzmon's ultimatum, the Clearing Group had accelerated past their original pace.

While, at first, many found the claims to be ridiculous, and that Kayaba had just simply trolled them into thinking things were changing, they were soon proven wrong.

"Avatars don't age!" Some argued. "My avatar doesn't look two years older!"

That was true to a degree, but then someone observed closely when players leveled up. There were subtle differences between a Level 97 character and a Level 98 character in terms of height and age.

It seemed that the 'age' factor had now been tied into the leveling progress of the player in question.

Plus- the given fact was that the monsters that were now spawning were nothing like the beasts that had been encountered in the 75 floors below.

Most simple mobs had Hourglasses on their bodies somewhere- which would allow them to be destroyed if those icons were hit.

The Higher Level Boss monsters tended to have those icons protected to some degree or were, in some of the most startling cases, simply there as a red herring. (Nobody wished to remember the chaos that had been the 88th Floor Boss fight. **[The Glass Cannon]** had Hourglasses stamped over every inch of its body, and it had been a lucky strike somewhere inside the beasts mouth that had finally taken it down.)

Over those two months- Kirito and Asuna had been teaming up with Yuu Amano, a boy from another dmension who had been hunting Quartzmon, to help clear the floors a bit quicker. In addition to that, they were making use of Yuu's accompanying Digimon to help cure their adopted daughter, Yui, of her broken memories.

And it had worked to a degree- Yui had been able to recall a small percentage of her memories both from her original self, and from whatever had carried over from the player whose deleted data she had absorbed to survive what had corrupted her in the first place.

It wasn't much on either end- but the small amounts of what she could remember were enough to set Kirito on edge.

**FLASH BACK_ _ _| 22ND FLOOR: WOODEN CABIN_ _ _| DECEMBER 4TH, 2024_ _ _|**

"I remember...Quartzmon," Yui said as she thought back to the memories that had just been unlocked, "He'd locked the Support AIs up and prevented them from activating to help. I...I was the Mental Health and Care Program."

Kirito and Asuna shared a glance at that.

"I grew concerned for the player's well being...people died, and I could do nothing to help..." Yui grimaced a bit, "I..it corrupted my data quickly, and... a short time after that I remember a player dying and I had to help them. A girl...she died last out of her friends when they were overwhelmed by a trap." Kirito grimaced, remembering a similar incident that probably was the one Yui was describing. "The SAO system saves raw emotion and player data stats when encountering them in high quantities... the sudden influx of that player's emotions...An unusually high feeling of happiness... I saved it to my own program." She frowned. "But I can't remember more from that point onward."

**END FLASH BACK_ _ _|**

As Kirito had suspected, the player that Yui had attempted to rescue was his former guild mate, **[Sachi]**. Yui didn't seem to remember meeting him in her memories, but at the same time, she'd said there had been an inexplicable pull to him and Asuna that she had felt, similar to the one that had drawn them all to that server room, that Kirito knew was part of Sachi calling through.

Honestly, Kirito was thankful that Sachi hadn't ended up haunting the world like had happened with a certain Guild master of the _Golden Apple_ guild...

But speaking of those two rescued children...

**FLASH BACK_ _ _| NOVEMBER 12, 2024_ _ _|**

"My name is Bishop," the girl said, "he is my brother, Rook." The boy nodded, but said nothing.

"And you're both parts of the Cardinal System?" Kirito asked.

"We are the physical, in-game representations of the two servers that governed Sword Art Online, that is correct," the girl said with a slow nod. "However, the system balance was disturbed from the onset, and we could not do our jobs properly. The Game Master's orders conflicted with balance, and the Interloper's modifications that went unseen by the Game Master were a push to an even worse imbalance."

* * *

"I've run my scans on them as I did with Yui-chan," Wisemon said as the trio of children chatted quietly in the yard outside. "I ran into an oddity I did not expect."

"Let me guess," Yuu said, "their Data matches up with Flute and Problem?"

"That is correct," Wisemon nodded, "however, the data scans I had on record showed an increase of Aged Data Corruption, when compared to their present selves." He shrugged, "If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that these children are at a maximum of ten years younger, with a minimum of six younger. But it could be more or it could be less."

"So those two-" Kirito motioned towards Bishop and Rook- "become PawnChessmon in your world?"

"Well," Yuu began, "it would explain where they got their weapons from."

"Eh?"Asuna blinked, "What?"

"Everyone in the Chessmonz have their signature weapons," Yuu explained, "normal weapons, things like swords and tridents and hand scythes."

"Okay, following you so far," Kirito said.

"Well, Flute and Problem use guns," Yuu said simply, "and also keys, and a clone of Green Lantern powers as well."

"..." Kirito stared blankly at Yuu. "Seriously?"

"I've seen Problem go from a key ring to a Tommy gun to a massive energy based, shoulder mounted, dual Gatling gun," Yuu said flatly, "I am dead serious here."

"Alright, so..." Asuna frowned slightly, "They keep their Game Balance powers?"

"And alter it heavily towards their own favor, I'd say," Wisemon chuckled. "Although, it seems that future them are doing it either unintentionally or are completely restricted to their weapons, as they've never mentioned any of this, nor would they willingly wish for their friends to come to any harm, as has happened in the past."

**END FLASH BACK_ _ _|**

Kirito and Asuna weren't quite sure what to make of the fact that their small cabin in the woods on the 22nd floor was now home to the SAO equivalent of gods.

Yuu just laughed at them- stating "My sisters can control life and water- and my niece can hide any object she wants to no matter how big it is, just so long as she can get her hands on it. You'll get used to it."

They did- to a small degree- but it never was enough...

* * *

With a flourish of energy- Kirito and Asuna teleported back into their cozy house on the 22nd floor.

"We're back," Asuna called out.

"Mama! Papa!" Yui came running out from another room to hug them. "Welcome back!"

"Thank you, Yui-chan!" Asuna smiled at the girl.

And so ended another ordinary day of the usual stuff...

Too bad they all knew it would come to an end rather soon...

* * *

**AINCRAD 99TH FLOOR BOSS ROOM.**

**JANUARY 8TH, 2025**

**3:14 P.M.**

* * *

_*cue Even In Death (Homestuck Vol 7)*_

The camera descended through the void towards the point just below the top most point of Aincrad- the 99Th Floor Boss Room.

It was a massive field of bubbling lava and twisting, turning gears that took up all of the space beneath the palace.

[0:08]

In the center of that floor was a massive, central gear, that had a floating staircase leading up to the Palace just above it.

Standing in front of that stairwell was a massive Tower reincarnation of what Yuu recognized to be the Horror Terror Corrupted Anubimon.

[0:16]

The Final Boss Raid Group stood at the ready. Weapons drawn and prepared to fight for the survival of their fellow players.

Heathcliff grit his teeth- this was nothing like he had originally planned- but damn it all if he wasn't going to see this fight through to the end.

And then- behind them- CascadeStarmon rose into the air- arms held to the side as he gathered all the energy needed for what he was about to pull off.

Everyone but the 99th Floor Boss knew this was coming, and the plan was set to go off the moment he made his move.

A Spirograph appeared in the air- followed by another and another and another... Soon, the entire open sky above the 99Th Floor Boss was covered in those Spirograph Portals.

[0:48]

A tense energy ran through the Clearing Group...

And then the Forward group ran forward as the Meteors began descending through the Portals.

The Floor Boss would have gone to attack them had it not been preoccupied in defending against the Meteorite Storm and the second group of players following suit.

[0:58]

But surprisingly- the Forward Group ran under The Floor Boss's legs and continued straight for the suddenly Kobold infested stairwell.

And as the Forward Group progressed on ahead- the final battle Began.

[1:11]

Klein and his Guild smashed through the Kobolds that had already been left behind by the sheer speed of the players who had rushed ahead.

None of them would be following up the stairs after the heroes of the day-

[1:18]

Agil slashed through the monsters before him with his ax- obliterating anything in his path with single strokes.

He grinned at the thought of all the rare items he could sell back to the players on lower floors.

[1:28]

As Meteorites descended behind her- a player named Silica and her Feathery Dragon Pina dashed through Kobolds left and right with her daggers- clearing the way for Rook and Bishop to follow behind her.

At the back of that small group- the girl Yui used a flaming sword to ensure that nothing got through to hurt the ones destined for future events.

[1:35]

Meanwhile just further ahead- side by side- Yuu and Lizbeth smashed the dazed Kobolds with their heaviest hammer strikes.

Both were leaping up the stairs in synchronized harmony as they smashed through the Kobolds and left them to tumble down the stairwell without so much as a warning.

[1:43]

And at the front of the group causing all of the mayhem were Kirito and Asuna- slashing and striking and spearing any Kobolds in their path and leaving them dazed behind them as they raced up to the Final Door that lead into the Palace.

[1:53]

And behind them- A large meteor struck down upon the 99th Floor Boss and lit it's dark oil aura aflame.

[2:00]

And with that- the Doors at the top of the stairs exploded open as our heroes rushed into the Temporal Dive Machine Control Room- to the sight of the 99th Floor Boss shattering into Polygons behind them.

A hooded figure spun on his heels to face the intruders, a scowl forming on his barely visible mouth.

The Forward Group emerged into the room, weapons drawn, and barley a sweat broken among them.

"It ends here," Kirito said as he leveled Elucidator at the figure. "Surrender now!"

"So..." The figure pulled off his hood as he snarled at them, "You made it here after all. What a surprise."

Yuu's eyes widened in surprise- "R-Ryouma?!"

[2:16]

"Yes, it's me alright," Ryouma's scowl turned into a Smirk. "Surprised?"

Everyone tensed up at this reveal- and Yuu just had to ask:

"How are you here? WHY are you here?"

"Always two there are," Bishop surmised, "A Master and an Apprentice."

"Star Wars references aside," Ryouma chuckled, "that is quite true. Quartzmon cannot run the SAO system alone, and so I am here to take care of the second half of the system...The Physical aspects of this Game, you see..."

"Shut up!" Kirito grit his teeth. "It doesn't matter at this point who you are or what you're doing here! Step away from that console right this second!"

_*cue Got To Win (SAO OST 2)*_

"Make Me." Ryouma narrowed his eyes as several copies of sword wielding Astamon materialized inside the room- no sign of their signature guns in sight.

"RAAH!" Everyone ran forward.

Weapons clashed as the 100th Floor Boss Fight began.

[0:10]

"RYOUMAAA!" Yuu dove towards the boy with a fire in his eyes, "You! Explain yourself RIGHT NOW!"

Ryouma easily blocked the scythe blade with a quickly materialized sword. "Eh? What is there to explain!?"

"What Quartzmon's doing here!" Yuu snarled as he swung around to try to decapitate the boy- Ryouma ducked to the side and jumped away from the complex looking console, "Why you've taken this game over!" Ryouma slashed out and Yuu had to dodge to the side lest he get cut across the chest. "Why the hell you summoned me here!?"

"The First question is answered by the second!" Ryouma laughed hollowly as he jumped away from a hammer strike. "And as for the the third? We wanted more of you here as part of our trap! But since you were the only one to come, we had to improvise!" He kicked out.

[0:20]

"WHAT!?" Yuu blocked the kick with Corone's pole grip- and then twisted around to throw Ryouma off balance. "What kind of Improvising!?"

"You'll-!" Ryouma stumbled backwards and nearly got caught up in a combo attack from two of Klein's Guild members against an Astamon. He quickly rolled foward to avoid it and then drew his sword up against Yuu again. "You'll find out soon enough if you somehow survive this!"

[0:25]

Yuu blocked with the pole again- and grit his teeth as Corone let a quiet yelp of surprise. "What the hell does that mean!?" He shoved away and launched a kick of his own- nailing Ryouma firmly in the chest and sending the boy flying backwards into the console he'd been trying to avoid directing any attacks towards.

Ryouma coughed as his answer- and Yuu leaped forward with the scythe blade raised high for an impaling strike.

"RAAAAH!"

Ryouma's eyes went wide as he saw death falling from above...

_**STAB!**_

[0:40]

Ryouma had dodged to the side- and the blade had been shoved straight down into the control console.

"N...NO!" Ryouma shouted in terror.

[0:44]

The entire console sparked and lit up and sent a massive jolt through Corone into Yuu- forcing him to let go and the girl to shift back into her human form in surprise.

The entire Castle of Aincrad shook as it's dimensional transportation system went offline and the entire place began falling downwards through the Time Storms towards an unknown destination.

Static moved past them all so fast that it appeared to be dark purple storm clouds and everyone suddenly had trouble staying on their feet- even the Astamon clones.

"KYAAAH!" Pina cried out in terror as she was flung from her stable flight into one of the malfunctioning panels of the Control Console- sending a lever flying backwards and triggering some unknown function as blue lightning began zapping around the entire castle.

[0:50]

"PINA!" Silica cried out in surprise- not that she nor anyone else could do much as all of Aincrad began to spin on it's central axis- much like a certain blue Police Call Box...

"WAAAAHHH!"

Nobody could control their movements- let alone Ryouma or anyone else.

[1:00]

"RAAAHH!" Excluding the two Cardinal Twins who had somehow managed to get a lucky trajectory and flung themselves at the boy- sending him flying through the air as the castle spun and spun and then-

[1:05]

-The three of them flew through the doorway and were flung straight out over the edge of Aincrad and into the Temporal Storm that was raging on around them.

"Bishop!" Yui called out in surprise, "Rook!"

"Forget them for now!" Lizbeth called out as she struggled to get to her feet- not even caring that all of the Astamon had vanished with Ryouma's exit- "They'll be fine, remember!?"

"L-Liz!?" Asuna gasped in surprise.

"We've got to stop this thing right now!" Lizbeth continued on as she struggled to run along the sloping floor towards the control console- "Or else we're going to be in a worse place then they are!"

The entire Castle began tilting in another direction at just that moment- sending everyone and everything sliding around once more.

[1:18]

But Liz somehow managed to turn that to her own benefit and leaped towards the console where she managed to grab onto a large lever sticking out of a socket- then pulled it down as she lost her footing once more. "Waah!"

The Castle began groaning with that same sound that had been heard during the first temporal jump- and the entire Scarlet Jade Palace began glowing red as the Emergency Brake activated and started to slow the Castle's descent down towards whatever dimension they were falling towards.

[1:27]

With grit teeth in determination- Liz pulled herself up once more and reached for a flashing button miss-labeled "Sheild."

It got pressed- and then- just like that- a massive purple shield of energy surrounded the Castle.

The lightning seemed to vanish around them as their spinning momentum began to disappear and the storm began to clear up just slightly around them as light shone up towards the entire castle from below.

[1:35]

From an outside perspective- namely, Alfheim's- a storm had opened up over the World Tree- and the Castle of Aincrad began to fall out through the eye of the storm.

But it wouldn't be enough- they'd crash if something wasn't done quickly to stop their still downwards momentum.

It was then that Yui managed to get her way over to the console just in time to pull down the same lever that Pina had crashed into- reactivating whatever safety mechanism that had been disabled- and then-

The Shield exploded outwards in all directions- bringing Aincrad to a grinding halt as the pent up energy from their improper inter-dimensional entrance was expended out into the world around them as a shock wave.

* * *

Silence fell over Alfheim Online and Sword Art Online as their two dimensional spaces became used to each others presence.

And then a large spark erupted from the broken control console- followed by two smaller ones in quick succession.

Kirito and Asuna got to their feet as they looked around the damaged room.

"Wheeew..." Klein let out a held in breath, "I never want to go through that again."

"Amen to that," Agil grumbled in agreement.

"Grrmmh..." Yuu groaned from the floor- "Did anyone get the number on that truck?"

"I like the darkness..." Corone giggled faintly from where she lay on the floor, "hello again old frieeendd..."

Lizbeth stared at the control console before her for a few moments before the entire thing went black as it's power finally died out. "Crap," she started to laugh histerically, "that's not good at all...!"

"Pinaa~!" Silica reached for her cowering dragon on the control console- who was shaken, but alive and unharmed. "You're okay...!"

"W...Where did we wind up?" Kirito asked even as Asuna ran over to the doorway to check on everyone outside.

"It's not SAO for sure," Yui frowned slightly as she looked up into the corner of her vision- "I can see two bars...?"

"Huh?" Kirito glanced up at his own Health bar in the corner of his vision..."What the hell...?" And now found that it had a blue "MP" bar underneath the usual green "HP" bar.

He looked over to Yui almost out of surprise at that- and then he realized that he could see her Player ID now- something that hadn't been there before. A quick glance at Yuu and Corone confirmed those same things- they were now registered as players after whatever had happened.

"Everyone!" Asuna called out from outside and down the stairs- "You have to come see this!"

* * *

There was a massive sun in the sky above them- a welcome sight after two months of nothing but space...

But beyond that were mountains in the distance- and forests and trees and a landscape...!

Meanwhile- on another floor with an equally impressive view, a certain Information Broker stared on at it all with wide eyes.

"Kii-bou," Argo The Rat muttered, "I don't think we're on Floor 22 anymore."

* * *

**RECTO PROGRESS LABS**

**JANUARY 8TH, 2025.**

**6:18 P.M.**

* * *

"You mean to say..." Sugou began asking the unfortunate tech who had brought him the bad news, "That Aincrad has materialized within Alfheim Online?"

"Y...Yes, sir," The tech nodded in confirmation.

"And...You mean to tell me..." Sugou continued even as his right eye twitched ever so slightly, "That because of this incident- all administrative control of the Alfheim servers have vanished from our control?"

"Y-Y-Yes," the tech nodded once more.

"Meaning that-" Sugou continued on- "we cannot shut down the servers nor force any players currently in the game to log out... meaning that even as we speak...word has emerged onto the internet that SAO's entire world has appeared in the sky of _**OUR GAME?**_"

"T...That's correct, Sir," The Tech didn't want to add that the only reason they even knew about Aincrad appearing was because the news was already out on the net.

"So basically..." Sugou coughed politely and fixed his tie unnecessarily, "the pooch is already screwed, is that what you're saying?"

"..." The Tech had no dignified response to that other than, "Y...Yes, sir."

Sugou remained silent for several moments as he ran a hand through his neat hair and un-straightened his tie...

"What's your name?" he asked.

"...Akayamiya, Senretsu, Sir." The Tech said after a moment of deliberation.

"Akayamiya, Sentretsu-san..." Sugou took a deep breath and closed his eyes...then snapped forward and opened his eyes as far as was humanly possible, highlighting the bloodshot effect that had seeped into them within the last few seconds as he yelled: _**"YOU! ARE! FIRED!"**_

"I know, sir," the Tech said with a sigh.

* * *

Tai Kamiya glanced at a Television monitor as the news of Aincrad's appearance inside ALfheim Online spread. "Well, that's some good news anyways," he said to his friend opposite him.

"Maybe," Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi said flatly as he checked his computer, "from what I can tell of the event from recorded in game footage, it's definitely a dimensional rift. Players so far think it's a stunt to draw people into the game, considering that the castle is too high above the in-game flight limit to even reach it..."

"I bet there'll be a push to reach the World Tree, though," Tai put his hand on his chin and mused the thought over. "From the branches of the tree- you could fly up to the castle."

"But until then, everyone inside that castle should be okay," Izzy nodded, "if Yuu is in there still, he'll definitely try to get them out of there."

"If Quartzmon will let him," Tai added with a scowl.

* * *

Sugou planted his head into his hands as his world came crashing down around him. His boss had found out and was ordering that a team of GMs be sent into the game to investigate.

His Boss- Asuna Yuuki's Father- was going to find her there...!

His plans were

_** RUINED!**_ -(ruined)

He had to do something-!

An unscrewing of a lid- the opening of the mouth-

_**SWALLOW.**_

...Ten seconds later, Sugou's mind recovered before it broke.

It came to him suddenly- He had to be on that rescue team! He just had to be...!

* * *

It came to them rather easily-

"We're screwed," Kirito said flatly as he observed the dead console.

"We could probably get it working again," Wisemon offered as he rubbed at his neck, "if we have all the right parts..."

Lizbeth kicked at the dead console, "Well, this thing's definitely not going anywhere any time soon, and I'd rather try fixing it than just sitting around here doing nothing."

"What do you think?" Yuu asked as he glanced over at Wisemon, "Can it be fixed?"

"I'd have to cannibalize some of my own machinery," Wisemon commented, "but I do believe we could replace whatever's broken internally...From there it'd be a simple matter of seeing if the internal programming is intact and we could Probably get it working from there."

"Alright then," Kirito nodded as he turned to leave, "I'll go let Heathcliff know so he can spread the word to the other players."

"What do you plan on saying?" Lizbeth asked.

"That we have a way home, but Quartzmon baited one of us into damaging it during the fight and we're working on fixing it so we can get out of here," Kirito said simply.

"Not one of my best moments, I'll admit," Yuu sighed. "Alright then, Let's get that machinery out, Wisemon..."

"Right!"

* * *

Kirito sighed as he stepped out of the room and onto the path down- where Asuna and Yui sat on the stairs waiting for him.

"Well?" Asuna asked.

"Yuu and Liz are working on it," Kirito said as he sat down, "I've got to see Heathcliff about letting the players know that it's being worked on, though..."

"Hm...That's a good idea," Asuna nodded.

"How are you holding up, Yui?" Kirito asked as he placed his hand on Yui's head and rubbed it side to side.

"Hm..." Yui closed her eyes as she thought on it, "I am functionally adequate, I suppose. But...I miss them."

Them being Rook and Bishop- the two Cardinal Twin AIs whom they had rescued and now were lost to time itself.

"I'm sure we'll run into them again," Kirito chuckled, "they become Yuu's friends, after all."

"Un," Yui nodded, "that makes it easier to bear to a degree, but I still can't help but to miss them."

"Yeah," Kirito sighed, "I know that feeling well."

And so the three of them sat on the steps for a few silent moments as they watched the sun move towards the horizon...

"OIIII! Kii-bou! Aa-Chan!"

Only to be interrupted as Argo came skipping up the steps towards them.

"Argo?" Kirito looked down at "The Rat" in surprise, "What are you doing here?"

"Hehe," Argo grinned at him, "Rumor has it that the 100th Floor Boss was defeated and all that shaking and tumbling we had a while ago was because of it!"

"We didn't kill it," Asuna admitted, "he just sort of...got flung out through the door. So I don't think we can say it was defeated..."

"So I've heard~!" Argo chuckled, "Who knew the physics system was so random, nyeh?"

"Not really random," Kirito scratched at his chin. "Just...a lucky hit, I suppose."

"Nyeheheh..." Argo smiled, "At any rate! We've cleared all 100 floors! That's news everyone's glad to hear, even if the scenery isn't exactly what we were all expecting to see after all this time..." She glanced out over the world below- "I wonder what it's called."

"Who knows," Kirito sighed as he stood up, "but I don't have time to sit around. Quests to finish and all that..."

"Right right," Argo nodded, "Good luck with that, Kii-bou!"

"Thanks, I think I'll need it," And with that said, Kirito started hopping down the steps.

"Good luck, Papa!" Yui waved after him.

Argo sat down where Kirito had been sitting moments before and pulled down her hood. "What a day, eh, Aa-chan?"

"Yeah," Asuna nodded. "It's been something alright."

"So now we have a Magic Bar too," Argo mused, "I wonder how that works?"

"Who knows," Asuna sighed, "I'm in no hurry to find out."

"I hear ya..." Argo sighed as she looked at the sun- "Know what one nice thing about all this virtual reality turned real thing is, though?"

"Yeah?" Asuna asked.

"We can look at a sun and not have our eyes burnt out!"

Asuna tried and failed to hold back a laugh.

* * *

**AINCRAD FLOOR 100: SCARLET JADE PALACE.**

**TEMPORAL DIVE MACHINE CONTROL ROOM.**

**THE NEXT DAY: 8:16 A.M.**

**ALFHEIM STANDARD TIME: 9TH OF FIRST MOON, 1806.**

* * *

The control console remained dim as it ran in maintenance mode- with two pairs of legs sticking out from underneath the console as their owners worked on the delicate inner workings of the device.

Suddenly! An alarm sounded, followed by the machine's central cylinder sparking. Not a second later, one Yuu Amano let out a yelp of surprise and quickly climbed out from under the machine to deal with the problem.

"What the hell!?" He muttered as he checked one of the flat screen monitors that was showing a protesting alert image. A few button taps later and a lever switched- and the screen gave a reason for it's alarm:

"Incoming transmission?" Yuu frowned, then quickly hit the button to accept the incoming call. "Hello? This is Yuu Amano of the Xros Heart United Inter-dimensional Army. May I ask who I'm speaking to?"

_"Yuu?"_ Shoutmon asked in surprise, although his voice was drowned out in static, _"Is *KRIZZLE*ly you?"_

"Yeah, it's me," Yuu frowned, "Shoutmon? Hold on a second, your connections not very strong," he messed with a few buttons and levers, "I'll try boosting the reception on my end..."

The control console gave off another protesting spark- and this time the girl under the console climbed out to glare at the boy. "Thanks for that! You just blew the circuit I was replacing!"

"Sorry, Liz," Yuu apologized, and fiddled with another lever before the signal strength improved. "Okay, Shoutmon! Try that again please?"

_"Yuu?"_ Akari's voice came out next- but thankfully clear and crisp. _"I don't know what you did, but that sounds a lot better."_

"I just had to adjust the phase tuning and raise some noise filters," Yuu frowned as he looked at the readout of the incoming signals. "Where the heck are you guys anyways? This isn't a very loud transmission you're putting out."

_"We know,"_ Kaiyumi sighed,_ "we've sort of gotten lost in another Dimension. Our Wristers won't broadcast out and our Xros Loaders aren't opening a time gate."_

_"You think you could send someone to come pick us up?" _Shoutmon asked.

"Ah..." Yuu started using the Time Machine's many scanners to pinpoint the signal origin, "I don't think _**I**_ can do that, per say..."

_"Why not?"_ Akari asked.

"Well," Lizbeth spoke up, "for one thing we're stranded in another dimension that wasn't the one we came from! The maneuvering controls got all cut up in the fight to take them back and we're trying to get them fixed right now. But for the time being, we're pretty much a rock in the river."

_"Okay, thanks..."_ Agumon said... _"Just one question."_

"Yes?" Lizbeth asked.

_"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU!?"_ **THUNK. **_"Ow!"_

"Very. _VERY rude, Agumon,"_ Kristy remarked.

"You **Punched** me!" Agumon protested.

_"And _You're_ getting hyper,"_ Kristy reasoned.

"Anyways," Yuu coughed, "right now I'm not in a position to send anyone your way, and I don't think anyone else will be picking up on this signal either going by how weak it is."

_"Where the heck are you anyways,"_ Shoutmon asked, _"that you're getting this signal even if it's really weak?"_

"Well for one thing," Yuu explained, "we're actually at the furthest edge of your localized broadcast. I'm trying to track down your dimensional coordinates right now...But we're on subspace chat, as far as I can tell, not hyper broadcasting like the Wristers work..."

_"In plain English, Yuu?"_ Simon asked.

"Right, sorry," Yuu shook his head, "The only reason we even picked this up is a fluke, honestly. The system's not calibrated for this kind of long distance chatting..." he frowned as the system pinged with a slightly narrowed down result. "Wow, no wonder the signal's so distorted. Initial results are placing you near a decaying branch of a massive timeline cluster."

_"No shit, Sherlock..."_ Agumon did a double take, _"Wait. Did you just say _'decaying branch'_?"_

"Yeah," Yuu frowned more as he narrowed down the search to that single branch- and then the alert message appeared once more. "Damn. Guys...this machine's telling me that you're presently inside a doomed timeline branch. Like Digi-Quartz became when Quartzmon did his thing back home...Just slower." He glanced at Lizbeth who was frowning at the message displayed on the monitor as well. She shook her head. No- it was impossible.

_"Yuu?"_ Shoutmon asked.

"Guys...according to this the timeline you're in is near total collapse." Yuu gulped as he read the information out to them. "Even if I got anyone out there in time, at this point the temporal decay's listing a jump in or out as impossible... In another five days, your time, that branch isn't going to even exist. Entropy is already cascading in..."

_"W...What happens if we stay here when it's erased?"_ Kristy asked.

_"Chances are,"_ Kaiyumi said, _"we'll get dumped out into another timeline like Tagiru and Chou did. We're not part of this timeline, after all."_

"Actually..." Yuu got really concerned from the data coming in.

_"What is it?"_ Akari asked.

"The system's giving us a lot of conflicting data," Lizbeth answered, "but it looks like someone is actively going back into that timeline's branch after your arrival there and is corrupting it as much as they can."

_"Corrupting how?"_ asked a voice Yuu wasn't familiar with. He paused for a moment as he realized that it was someone who was probably native to that timeline. This wasn't going to be easy...

"Quartzmon's using a tower to keep the timeline from branching when he changes." Yuu finally said with a flat and neutral voice even as his eyes started to tear up, "That five day estimate? That's already dropped down to four as the ripples are catching up to you." He took a moment to let it sink in, and then continued... "You're going to be erased with the timeline when it terminates." He couldn't help but to sniff, "I'm sorry. I...I can't do anything from here but hope...hope that... that..."

_"That the _**other us**_ got out of this without a scratch?"_ Agumon offered bitterly.

"No." Yuu narrowed his eyes in indignation at that remark, "That you guys find a way out of this and survive." He clenched a fist, "We've gotten out of worse situations than this...And You guys make up Xros Heart's heart! Without you...we're...we've..."

_"I'll try messing with our Xros Loaders then," _Kaiyumi said, _"see if we can get out of here in one shot."_

"Good luck, guys," Yuu managed to say just before the signal was terminated on the broadcaster's end. "...You're going to need it."

Lizbeth frowned, "That didn't sound good to me."

"Yeah," Yuu nodded, "it's not."

"What do we do about it?" Lizbeth asked.

"..." Yuu thought for a moment, then called over to the other part of the room, "Wisemon! Wake up!"

Wisemon and Corone had both fallen asleep at some point during the all-night-er job that had been pulled- the former was leaning back against a hollowed out metal frame that had once contained a lot of electronics, and the latter was lying stretched out over a wooden cot that had been brought in at some point.

The moment Yuu called out- Wisemon sat up with a sputter, and Corone groaned about waking up from a nice dream.

"Wh-What?" Wisemon shook his head out to clear the cobwebs, "What's wrong, Yuu?"

"We just got a call from Shoutmon in a doomed timeline," Yuu explained. "Do you think you can rework the sensors to track their temporal decay status and maybe allow us to accelerate our frame of reference while slowing theirs down?"

"Um..." The Digimon scratched at the top of his head, "probably... Why?"

"I can't turn my back on them, Wisemon," was all Yuu had to say.

"It won't be easy," Wisemon said, "but if we can get the Flux Capacitors to-"

Whatever Wisemon was going to say was cut off as Klein ran up into the room- "Oi! We've got Incoming!"

"What?" Lizbeth asked as she turned to face the man, "Incoming from where!?"

"The surface!" Klein said with a bit of panic. "There are glowing dots flying right towards us!"

* * *

A quick teleport had brought them down to a middle level floor balcony where everyone was presently looking out towards the ground as a squad of ten glowing lights flew ever closer to the city of Aincrad.

Front Line Players had their weapons drawn just in case they were hostile Mobs- others were simply curious to see what it was.

Yuu reloaded a pair of Binoculars from his Xros Loader and peered out into the early morning fog... "No way...!"

"What is it?" Lizbeth asked, even as he handed over the binoculars.

"You tell me!" Yuu said as she looked through at the light.

"...Woah!" Liz put the binoculars down for a moment, then looked back through as if to double check, "Are those-?"

"Humans with glowing wings?" Yuu finished her question- as well as told everyone around what it was. "Yeah, I think they are...!"

"Let me see that," Klein grabbed the binoculars from Lizbeth and looked through- Sure enough, he saw exactly what they had seen. "Woah is right!" He exclaimed in surprise. "I count...Five? Six of them? Looks like a few have GM robes on...!"

"GM Robes?" A whisper fluttered through the gathered crowd.

"So we landed in someone else's game then," Yuu surmised. "I'm guessing we probably screwed things over pretty badly..."

"I'll give Kirito and Asuna a ring," Klein said as he handed the Binoculars back to Liz, "they're going to want to see this." And with that, he turned to run off towards the nearest gate.

* * *

After a few minutes of handing off the Binoculars to everyone who wanted to look through- the incoming party of flying people became visible to the naked eye without need for external aid.

A few clever players had stitched together a large flag of patch worked cloth to hang out over the balcony to give the incoming people a signal as to where to land. The Front Liners present still held caution- there was a possibility that these people weren't friendly at all, and that they could be trying to invade the castle.

The Seconds passed- and the Guild Leaders and highest ranking players had all gathered on the spot- either ready to do combat or welcome their visitors with welcome arms- which ever came first.

Then finally- the flying people came up to the balcony and landed- giving all of the Aincrad players a show as their wings faded out with a burst of Magic.

A glasses wearing girl stepped forward, speaking for the group, "Hello all, My name is **Breeze**, I'm a GM for the game ALfheim Online," she bowed slightly, "and I'm guessing that you all are the two years missing players of the game Sword Art Online?"

"Yes, that we are," Heathcliff nodded, "we've had a bit of an incident with a malevolent presence taking over our castle, you see..."

"Akihiko Kayaba," Another GM, tall, male, with long flowing golden hair, spoke up with a harsh tone.

"No, actually," Yuu spoke up, "A demon calling itself Quartzmon who had crafted this entire scenario using everyone- Kayaba included- as pawns on a chess board."

This caught the party of Game Masters by surprise- but none so much than the man who had spoken up.

His right eye twitched visibly as he spoke in return, "And just what would you know about fake demons, boy?"

"The fact that we've survived this game for the last two months- let alone the past two years," Yuu explained, "This castle- Aincrad- has the power to traverse other dimensions and worlds. As you've no doubt noticed."

"Indeed we have," Breeze nodded. "The game Alfheim Online is presently run by the company RECTO Progress, and-"

"Prove it," It was then that Asuna spoke up, stepping forward into the morning light of the world. "Prove that you're really run by RECTO."

It was with this reveal that one of the other male GM's took a step forward, "Asuna?"

Asuna blinked- recognizing that familiar voice. "Do I know you?"

"I...It's your father," The man said, tears in his eyes, "Yuuki, Shouzou," he smiled at her.

Asuna narrowed her eyes slightly- "Prove it."

"Huh-?" The man paused at that.

"Tell me something only my father would know personally," She said simply.

"Y..." Everyone tensed up as the man stumbled for the right words... "...Our Maid's name. It's Sada."

Asuna let her frown slip just a bit, "I can't say that it is you for sure just by that. We'll have to talk later." And with that, she turned back into the crowd.

"But Asuna-" The man stopped moving as another GM put her hand on his shoulder.

"It's not worth it for now, Sir," she said.

The blond man's right eye twitched even further at this- not only had she so coldly rejected her father, but she had joined hands with some boy in black just deeper into the crowd!

"Anyways!" Heathcliff coughed, "We're presently working on a way to exit this game and take Aincrad with us," he smiled politely, "we'll be out of your hair as soon as we're able to ensure that Quartzmon hasn't escaped out into this Alfheim, and we're able to return to the real world easily once he's taken care of."

"And just how do you plan on doing that?" The blond man asked, snarling slightly, "The castle doesn't exist! It's just data! How do you expect to take it with you when only your bodies will return?"

Everyone looked at the man like he was crazy.

"Because this castle can jump through dimensions," Yuu said simply. "And besides that, from what I've been able to pull from Quartzmon's plan database, the NervGear trip was a one way trip. The only way out of SAO is to take the Castle out physically."

"Excuse me, sir, um..." Breeze looked towards Heathcliff.

"Heathcliff," Heathcliff said.

"Heathcliff-san, why do you let this boy talk for you?" she asked.

"Because he has experience with Quartzmon," Heathcliff said simply, "he came from another world to hunt him down."

"What?" the blond man nearly shouted in dismay, "What kind of nonsense is this?"

"Not nonsense at all," Yuu said as he pulled out his Xros Loader and displayed a holographic image of the Xros Heart Army logo, "I'm Yuu Amano, from the Xros Heart Inter-dimensional United Army. I- and many others- travel across dimensions hunting down Quartzmon where-ever he hides and put a stop to his machinations whenever and where-ever we can." He narrowed his eyes slightly, "Trust me when I say, everything we have just said is completely true."

* * *

Leefa found herself at the base of the World Tree- staring up at the castle Aincrad that floated above.

The Treaty had been signed, and both Cait Sith and Sylphs had relocated back to their home territories before the Salamanders could regroup. Leefa had passed along Recon's message about Sigurd to Sakuya, and she'd been pleased to watch his name vanish from the Faction List.

All of that said and done- Leefa had then traveled to the World Tree where she stood presently.

Rumors had been spreading around the city that a party of six GMs had flown up to the castle- as if investigating it's sudden appearance.

All Leefa had to do now was wait for one of them to return to Aruun, the City born from the Tree's roots, and ask to join them on the next expedition up to the Castle.

But that was when something strange happened- The Castle began drifting away from the tree- and away from the city as well- lowering itself down closer to the ground- or at least past the tree branches that marked the altitude limit for player flight.

She couldn't help it- she took off towards the Castle.

* * *

Yuu sighed in relief as Aincrad's navigational controls responded properly. "Looks like we fixed that part, anyways..." he said.

"Yeah," Lizbeth nodded as she pulled a lever to make the Castle come to a stop. "And now that we're in the player flight limit zone, we should be able to get someone in here to help replace the broken console."

"Yeah," Yuu sighed, "we can replace the parts all we want to, but that massive gash just isn't going to go away." He glanced out towards the door, where Klein and Agil stood guard, not allowing any of the GMs from Alfheim inside just yet...

Well, just the one really.

"I said LET ME INSIDE!" The blond haired man snarled, "I am Oberon! The Director of the Research Institute of RECTO Progress Inc.! I demand that you let me in this very moment!"

"No way bud!" Klein said as he crossed his arms, "None of the other GMs wanted in here! And besides- we're under direct orders not to let anyone else in here unless they're working on repairing the console!"

"Under direct orders from WHOM!?" Oberon snarled.

"Me." Came Kirito's voice from behind the man, "Heathcliff too, actually, although he's never been in here personally."

Oberon turned on his heels, "And what the hell gives you the right to make such an order, Brat!?"

"..." Kirito stared blankly at the man, "People who act as stubbornly as you are, actually."

_**"What Was That-~!?"**_ Oberon shouted.

"There were a small number of players who broke off into their own Guild," Kirito explained, "all of them thought that there was a conspiracy of the Clearers causing the present situation of us being trapped in the game before the Clearing Groups were even a thing. When Quartzmon took over, they tried to become the 'new' Clearing Group that would clear the game without anyone's interference." Kirito shook his head sadly as he continued, "Sadly, their bumbling only made things worse and all of them got themselves killed trying to barge into a room the Clearing Group had identified as dangerous- an anti crystal trap room that contained an infinitely spawning amount of monsters. We nearly lost all access to the Boss room on that floor because of their actions, and then the game would never have been cleared to this point at all."

Oberon stared blankly at the boy, "...Eh?"

"Basically," Agil said as he clapped a hand onto the blond man's shoulder- "We're keeping everyone out of a dangerous area that could cause irreparable damage to the entire world around us while it's damaged."

"So step back," Kirito said, "we don't want anyone getting hurt."

Oberon grit his teeth, "Fine!" he snarled and started storming down the steps back to the 99th floor Boss Room. "I'll be back though!"

"What the heck was up with that guy?" Klein asked.

"Who knows," Agil shook his head.

* * *

Leefa was amazed by the sheer scale that Sword Art Online's **"Starting City" **provided. The Town was large- huge and massive- and everyone seemed to go about with an energy that they didn't seem to have had in recent times.

Plus- many of them were amazed with her presence alone. A new face among the many old ones.

She wasn't the only one- of course. Other Alfheim Online players had come up to the floating Castle as well- most of whom were seeking relatives who were lost to SAO when the game had pulled 10,000 players inside...

Leefa could sympathize with that- her brother had to be here somewhere in the Castle, after all!

She started asking around...

* * *

Sugou pulled his AmuSphere off of his head and reached for his bottle of medicine... His insanity seemed to increase at a faster rate when he was inside the game than outside. He'd nearly lost it when the guards wouldn't let him into the control room.

"Damn it...!" He hissed to the supposedly empty room as he downed another dose, "what stupidity...!"

"Not stupidity, actually," came a familiar voice, "a far thing from it in fact."

Sugou didn't even need to look up to know it was the boy, Ryouma. "What do you want?"

"Back in, actually," Ryouma snarled, "they managed to kick me out of the Castle when they damaged the controls...That Amano boy... He's the one you should take down."

"Take...down?" Sugou frowned, "Impossible."

"Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it," Ryouma said with a frown, "those players of SAO have proven that well enough, haven't they?"

"..." Sugou mulled it over in his head for a few moments...

* * *

Meanwhile- Quartzmon slipped through the cracks of the Castle Aincrad as nothing but wisps of data.

The Terminal had NOT meant to be damaged, which meant that his data had leaked out of it during the sudden descent. Adding onto that: Ryouma had been lost to the void during the incident.

Quartzmon would have snarled if his body had a mouth.

He had to change the plan.

Heavily.

It was there that fate smiled down upon Quartzmon as he slithered through a wall and found the slumbering form of Oberon-the GM avatar of his 'faithful' servant on the other side, Sugou Noboyuki.

* * *

"You're not having seconds thoughts about all this, are you?" Ryouma asked, a frown forming on his face.

"No! Of course not," Sugou frowned, "but the other GMs will be watching me. I won't have a chance to get anywhere near him!"

"Then I will ensure a distraction has occurred by activating one of our hidden Towers," Ryouma explained, "that way you can kill the boy and nobody will be the wiser!"

* * *

If Ryouma was doing his job properly- Sugou would be distracted at this moment, and _weak_ as well...

He wouldn't have had the chance yet to down another dose of medicine.

This was Quartzmon's chance.

He slithered his data code into the inactive avatar, and began embedding himself into the codes... No, he wouldn't hijack the avatar- couldn't, actually. Not while "Oberon" was in "Sleep Mode." The server would be able to tell the difference between the player originated signals and the in game originated signals.

Quartzmon's smirk faintly appeared on Oberon's face, and to anyone who happened to be watching, it seemed as if the avatar was smiling in it's sleep.

* * *

"Return to the game," Ryouma insisted, "and then we will put the plan back on course right this instant...!"

Sugou forgot all about his need for a calm mind in the haze of Ryouma's snake like words combined with the murky weather of his own insanity.

He donned the AmuSphere and returned to the game world.

* * *

Quartzmon felt the avatar revive itself as Sugou's personality crept back into the digital realm- inside the code of the Avatar Oberon, Quartzmon slithered up close to the virtual Sugou that appeared when he had logged back in.

"Huh?" Sugou glanced over his shoulder, staring right at Quartzmon. But...he didn't see him. All he saw was the outside world and all that the AmuSphere told him he should be seeing.

Quartzmon grinned- and then shoved his mind straight through Sugou's broken mind and worked his way straight into Sugou's physical brain.

"GEAH!HH!" To the World of ALfheim Online, it appeared that Oberon was clutching his head at the onset of a sudden headache.

It was all too easy, Quartzmon chuckled at the irony, as he plundered the resources and memories of Sugou Noboyuki and re-appropriated them to his own benefit.

Sugou was the perfect man for this endeavor- egotistical, greedy, lustful, and insane. The broken mind was but a puzzle waiting to be reassembled- and Quartzmon filled in the pieces with his own essence and data.

Quartzmon lamented the timing of it all. He'd planned on letting Sugou survive just a bit longer before pulling off this possession...

* * *

To the Outside World- Earth- Sugou's hands clenched up in the game despite that physical impossibility of the brain signals reaching the body.

Ryouma smirked. Even in failure- the plan succeeded.

* * *

Quartzmon spread out- pushing and erasing everything unnecessary about Sugou Noboyuki and implanting himself in place.

Finally- mere seconds after the process had begun, Quartzmon had transferred into the perfect vessel.

Nobody would suspect the actions of what were about to happen on him- but instead would blame it entirely on Sugou himself!

He brought the body Oberon to it's feet, and as he did such...

A fresh- stabbing pain seemed to run through his body- a sensation burning out from the heart and through his body.

He fell to his feet and reached for that log out button on instinctive memory from Sugou's mind.

* * *

Mere moments later, he was sitting up in the real world, clutching at his heart even as Ryouma looked down on him with surprised eyes.

"Is everything alright?" Ryouma asked.

"No!" Sugou/Quartzmon coughed, "Damn it...this body...it's rejecting my presence in it..." He then spat out a large glob of blood from his mouth... "Shit..." He groaned, "I don't think I'll have much time to complete the plan." He looked to Ryouma, "You'll have to take over the avatar for me while I deal with things on this end."

Ryouma's eyes narrowed dangerously, "With pleasure."

**TO BE CONTINUED IN:**

_**THE FINAL BOSS!**_


	3. The Final Boss!

**AINCRAD FLOOR 100: SCARLET JADE PALACE.**

**TEMPORAL DIVE MACHINE CONTROL ROOM. **

**ALFHEIM STANDARD TIME: **

**9TH OF FIRST MOON, 1806, 12:06 P.M.**

* * *

A figure slipped up the steps into the darkened Control Room- his golden hair flowing behind him most un-stealthily.

He passed by the unguarded doors, and sneaked towards the inert and disabled control console.

A scowl formed on the man's face. The damage had been mostly repaired, it seemed, save for the cosmetic appearance of the damaged console...

He reached for a keyboard on one of the intact console, and tapped the space bar a few times to bring it out of sleep mode.

The monitor before him lit up- displaying the current status of a particular doomed timeline.

The man let out a slight hiss.

It was the timeline Shoutmon and his friends had been stuck in.

How did Yuu know about it enough to track it's status?

He supposed that he DID tell him that something was up, however-

The console beeped suddenly in alarm as the status on the Timeline began to fluctuate wildly.

"What the...?" The man scowled as he watched the status scroll through gibberish and unknown languages before finally settling on something:

**TIMELINE STATUS:**

**ALPHA.**

"..." He stared at the screen for a few moments, "...What?"

How could an entire timeline go from Doomed to Alpha in-?

Wait.

Even if they somehow escaped being doomed- the Timeline status should have reverted to BETA instead of-

_**"RRRHHHAAAAAAHHH!"**_

The man felt faint all of a sudden.

His location had changed to...Space?

Wait- what was that massive thing coming down towards him with the swords and the-

_**SLASH SLASH!**_

Ryouma Mogami- current controller of the ALfheim Avatar "Oberon"- was slapped back into the present as Kirito's swords Elucidator and Dark Repulsor cut into his body.

"GYAAH!" He stumbled away from the console as he felt four sword strikes occur from a measly two. "What the hell!?"

"Oberon!" The GM Breeze stepped out of the shadows, "I nearly didn't believe it when I was told you'd demanded access to this control room, but now...!" Her fists clenched. "Why didn't you come to me or Yuuki-san first?"

"W...Who?" Ryouma scowled.

"Don't play dumb with us!" Another GM stepped forward- with Yuu and Klein behind him. "We know about your insanity, Sugou, so don't think that can excuse you from your actions!"

"No, seriously," Ryouma's scowl deepend, "I don't have a clue who any of you are... I just took this guy's AmuSphere and logged straight on."

"And you decided to come straight to the control room where Oberon had been seen not an hour before?" Kirito asked- "I doubt it. Not with the way you reacted to the information on that screen."

"..." The intruder sighed as he sent a command into the game server to change his avatar appearance to a certain way- "Fine. You've got me. I- Ryouma Mogami- have been impersonating your "Oberon" this entire time."

"Lies," Breeze insisted, "Sugou went into full dive ahead of all of us- we saw him go in with our own eyes."

**Processing Request...**

"Then maybe you should check where your dear Sugou is right now," Ryouma pressed on. "Ten bucks says he's in the hospital this very moment."

"From what?" Yuu asked, eyes narrowed.

**Request Accepted! **

"What else?" Ryouma chuckled as his avatar's body grew taller- shifting into the more familiar form of Gravimon- although his clothes remained unchanged. Oh well- it wouldn't matter much in a few moments. "Poison in his medicine."

"Gravimon!" Yuu shouted as he drew his Scythe. "Get him!"

"RHAAHA!" Kirito leaped forwards with a **Starburst Stream **attack.

"HURAAH!" And every member of Klein's Guild emerged from the shadows as well to join the attack.

_'Oh Crap In a Hat.'_ Gravimon/Ryouma swore as he was barred down on from all sides-

He felt every sword strike from Kirito twice over- each time accompanied by a brief flash of vision of that other battle...

That distracted him from the overall damage he'd taken from the other attackers- and then Yuu came barring down on him with a glowing hammer-strike-

**"BREATH IMPACT!"**

* * *

_*cue INNOCENCE, TV Size*_

**SWORD ART ONLINE  
VS.  
DIGIMON XROS WARS**

* * *

_*cue Title Theme (Xros Wars)*_

**"THE FINAL BOSS!"**

* * *

Ryouma shot up in bed and threw the AmuSphere off immediately. _"AAHH!"_ His breathing was heavy as he recalled the sensations of his body being obliterated inside the Game World.

He'd almost forgotten what it'd been like to die like that- the last time that he could clearly recall being when Anubimon had exploded the entire palace with malignant energies...

At least this time he didn't have to go through the feeling of stitching himself together again.

It was then that the several guns clicking drew Ryouma's attention up towards the armed guards who surrounded him.

"T-That's him!" Sugou/Quartzmon said between pained coughs- "That's the man who poisoned me...!"

Ryouma glanced up at Sugou/Quartzmon and swore at his alternate-future self. "I hope they strike you straight through the heart like that Piedmon did, old man."

Sugou/Quartzmon coughed up a bit of blood- but smirked just the same.

* * *

"I see..." Breeze nodded as she closed the message window, "then that boy was telling the truth. Sugou was poisoned. He claims this Ryouma boy took advantage of his sudden pain and threw him to the ground before stealing the AmuSphere and logging in."

"So it was Ryouma then..." Kirito sighed, "Then we've won? We've kicked him out fully?"

"Something doesn't add up about this," Yuu frowned, "why the hell would Ryouma go to all that trouble to put poison in insanity medicine, blatantly steal an AmuSphere, and rush in here blindly to try to take over the controls again?"

"Maybe he wanted to make sure we didn't mess anything up?" Lizbeth offered, "We were fixing the damage, after all. Maybe he thought he could pull Aincrad out to the real world."

"Well," Wisemon spoke up as he reloaded from Yuu's Xros Loader- surprising nobody but the GMs from ALfheim Online- "from my monitoring of the past events- there have been a few subtle dimensional tugs on the castle ever since we completed the maintenance. Which suggests to me that we have fully repaired the machine. Ryouma's attack just now could very well have been his attempt to aid Quartzmon in pulling us back into whatever plan we interrupted."

"So should we put it to the test then?" Yuu asked. "Pull Aincrad out of Alfheim and into Earth?"

"That would probably be the best course of action," Kirito nodded, then glanced over to Breeze. "You should probably get all the Alfheim Players off of Aincrad before we jump. There's no telling what might happen if we tried pulling out with someone from the other game on the castle."

"Right, like what we were afraid might happen before we found out Quartzmon played us all for fools," Yuu nodded, though scowled. "And speaking of Quartzmon- we haven't heard a word come out of that guy ever since we landed in Alfheim..."

"Hey, you're right...!" Klein's eyes widened slightly, "That guy never missed a chance to berate the NPCs for playing Jazz music!"

"...You don't think that Quartzmon hitched a ride out with Ryouma?" Kirito asked suddenly, "Do you?"

"...We need to get to Earth right away," Wisemon declared.

* * *

_**"ATTENTION PLAYERS OF ALFHEIM ONLINE!"**_ A massive voice boomed over the Castle speakers- _**"We will be attempting a Dimensional Jump in ten minutes! Please evacuate to the City Aruun right away!"**_

Leefa didn't pause at that message even when the other Alfheim Players around her did- instead- she continued running for the warp gate.

_'Not now! Not Now!'_ she cursed her luck- _'Not when I just got a lead on Onii-chan...!'_

She stepped up onto that platform and shouted out: _**"TELEPORT! SCARLET JADE PALACE!"**_

* * *

Asuna stood up from her seat at the dining room table in her house on the 22nd floor. "Well, then, father," she smiled at the man who also stood up, "I suppose that if this all works out, I'll be seeing you in the real world then."

"Indeed," her father nodded. "I...It's been good to see that you've made a decent life for yourself here, Asuna," he smiled. "A caring husband, a lovely daughter...And you! A master of cooking! I'll be sure to tell your brother that you've done well for yourself. That his absence in coming to this world caused good rather than ill."

"Please do," Asuna closed her eyes, "though, if it all works out, I should be able to tell him myself before too long." She opened them again, tears brimming at the corners, "See you soon, Father."

"I'll be waiting, Daughter," Her father smiled as well.

* * *

Leefa materialized at the warp gate just at the end of the massive floor that had once been covered in Lava- but now was graced by the flower fields of victory.

A stairwell lay before her- and she spread her wings and soared up them.

_'Faster- Faster!'_ She pushed herself to fly up past the retreating Alfheim GMs and past the startled guards. "ONIII-CHAAAN!" she shouted as she targeted the only black-hair-black-clothes person in the room.

He looked over in surprise- familiar eyes widening in confusion- "Haah?"

_**FLY-GREET!**_

She slammed into the boy and pushed him into the floor- hugging him tightly.

"What-?" Kirito blinked in confusion- "Who...?"

"You're alive!" Leefa was crying with relief, "You really survived through this world!"

"W...Sugu...ha?" Kirito finally recognized the voice from the person who had just glomped him.

* * *

Yuu just shook his head in memory of his own reunion with his sister, Nene, four years earlier. "Has it really been that long since that war?" he asked as he pressed a few buttons and pulled a few levers.

"Ah, yes it has," Wisemon chuckled, "I'm surprised it's been as long as it has been."

_"Amen to that, brother!"_ Starmon laughed from the Xros Loader. _"To think it's been four...almost five years now since we started this adventure collecting Code Crowns!"_

"We've really come a long way, haven't we?" Corone asked as she leaned up next to Yuu against the console. "I used to work for DarkKnightmon...so did Sally and Nene..."

_"Kotone too,"_ Spadamon remarked from the Xros Loader. _"Then there were the Death Generals...And we're still cleaning up _that_ mess, aren't we?"_

"Gravimon," Wisemon nodded. "Quite a pest, he is."

_"And he works with Quartzmon too!"_ Starmon huffed. _"What a sore loser!"_

"At any rate," Yuu chuckled as he glanced over at Kirito and Leefa, who were still chatting about all the things that had gone on, "it seems Asuna isn't the only one to reunite with her family today."

"I hate to break it up," Wisemon said, "but she really must log out before we leave. There's no telling what might happen to her when we depart."

"Yeah-" Yuu sighed.

"Oiii, Yuu!" Lizbeth called out suddenly from the other side of the console- "Incoming Video Message from someone calling himself Kamiya!"

"Kamiya?" Yuu's eyes widened slightly- "Put it through!"

The monitor above him cut to static and then resolved into a blurry web-cam video feed of Tai Kamiya- _"Yuu! Man am I glad to see you!"_

"Tai-san!" Yuu grinned slightly, "How'd you get this number?"

_"We just got a call from Shoutmon- he gave us this broadcast frequency so you can track us back to the Earth that the SAO players belong to,"_ Came Izzy's voice from off screen. _"Also! You need to take a look at this-!"_

The image spun around- as an actual laptop somewhere was spun around to look at something.

* * *

"We could really use reinforcements right about now!" Tai continued on as the image before him was fed into the camera despite the massive wind blowing past them obscuring parts of it.

_"Is that a-?!"_ Yuu stopped himself midsentence- unable to say it.

"It's a Quartzmon Terminal, Yes!" Izzy added as he narrowed his eyes at the massive black orb lowering itself towards the city streets.

* * *

"Damn it...!" Yuu's hands clenched into fists. "Alright then," He narrowed his eyes and began tracing the feed source back to the proper dimension- "Signal is locked on and we'll be ready to depart in a moment!"

_"See you soon, then!"_ Tai said before the feed cut out.

"OI!" Yuu spun on his heels, "Leefa-san, I apologize for this, but I've got to ask you to leave right now."

"What?" Leefa stood up in protest, "No way! I just found Onii-chan again and I'm not leaving him behind!"

"Sugu-" Kirito put a hand on her shoulder, "Please, you've got to go back now. We don't know what will happen if we try to jump and you're still logged in on the castle."

"I'll take that risk!" Leefa spun around, "I heard what's going on back home! If you go back into that you're going to fight whatever it is, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I am, but-" Kirito was cut off as Leefa glared at him.

"Then I'll fight with you!" She declared, "How do you expect to fight anything that can fly without wings!? Huh?!"

"Er...Well..." Kirito scratched at the side of his head.

"Then I'll stay!" Leefa crossed her arms and stomped her right foot into the ground, "I'll stay so I can fight with my wings!"

Lizbeth and Yuu shared a glance with each other, then looked to Wisemon.

"Well," He shrugged, "it will be a good way to find out what happens to someone in this situation, I suppose, if she's voluntering for it?"

"Well alright then!" Yuu hit a button and shouted into the intercom- "Attention Aincrad! We'll be heading out a little ahead of schedule! Please strap yourselves into any available nearby buildings, and if you're an Alfheim player, please hurry off the Castle right now!"

"Front liners!" Lizbeth spoke into it next, "We're going to be pulling into earth- but that guy? Quartzmon? He's got some kind of trap waiting for us there. We're probably going to have to fight any ALO or SAO mobs that he might have waiting for us- so get your gear ready if you're willing to fight!"

The two pilots shared a glance- then nodded as they pulled two leavers simultaneously.

* * *

_**VWORRRP...**_

To the world of Alfheim Online- the Castle at the top of Aincrad glowed red as the castle began to fade away.

_**VWOOOOORRRPP...**_

Two pulses- it could barely be seen.

_**VVVWWOOOOORRRRRPPPP...**_

A Third pulse- and it was gone.

* * *

In the Kirigaya household- one Suguha Kirigaya lay in bed, an AmuSphere lying over her head.

As the Quartzmon Terminal visible through the window descended on the distant city- her AmuSphere began to glow a faint blue as her body started to glow a familiar shade of golden yellow...

* * *

As Aincrad flung itself side-wards through the Temporal Void- Leefa collapsed to the ground and shrieked in surprise.

"Sugu-!" Kirito's eyes widened in surprise.

But it was then that everyone was caught off guard as Yuu's Xros Loader suddenly shot out of his pocket- surrounded by a sphere of yellow light.

_"Not Agaiiiin!"_ Starmon lamented as the Xros Loader acted on its own once more-

_**Chime!**_

The top opened and it let out a familiar chime of beeps along with a flash of light.

"What the-!?" Yuu's eyes widened- "A Digi-Xros!?"

* * *

Suguha Kirigaya's body transformed into a sphere of light that shot out through the window and then up into the air-

* * *

-Where it shot in through the open doors and entered the avatar "Leefa."

"W...What the heck...?" Lizbeth stared on in surprise- "What's happening to her!?"

"Su..gu..." Kirito's eyes were wide open as he watched the avatar before him change in ever so slight ways- the blond hair shifted into a familiar black shade, and her eyes changed color as well. Some of her facial features reworked themselves as well to more closely mimic what the girl looked like in reality, and when the light show faded...

Suguha Kirigaya/Leefa sat where she had moments before with a pounding headache.

"Owowowow..." She grit her teeth.

"Well..." Wisemon remarked as he watched Yuu's Xros Loader float back over towards Yuu- "That was unexpected."

"Tell me about it-" Yuu frowned as he caught his Xros Loader and glared at it before pocketing it, and turning back towards the monitor- "We're coming through!"

* * *

**VWORP.**

Everyone's eyes went to the sky as a shadow began to fall over the city.

**VWOORRRP.**

A flying castle was materializing in the sky-

**VWWWWOOOORRRRP.**

Tai let out a whoop as he punched a fist into the air, "YEAH!"

Izzy frowned- "Did they have to do it in such an obvious manner?"

* * *

Much to the SAO player's surprise- their Magic Point gauges and Hit Point Gagues had remained visible to them- but among the sudden surprise was the random addition of ALfheim's magic wings appearing on their backs- each set a different color depending on the player's present armor coloring.

"Wh..Woah!" Silica cried out in surprise as her feet suddenly lifted off of the ground- "Awesomeee!"

Pina let out a proud cry- Her friend had learned to fly too!

* * *

Yuu narrowed his eyes at the wings that had sprouted from his back. "Okay- Seriously?" He pulled his Xros Loader out and glared at it- "You did that Digi-Xros thing to everyone, didn't you? Combined ALO avatar data with SAO Avatar data and gave everyone Wings?"

The Xros Loader remained silent- although it's screen flashed a winking emoticon for a few seconds in response.

Yuu sighed.

"I think they look pretty!" Corone giggled as she spun around on her own recently added wings- "I wonder if I get any new attacks from this?"

"Well..." Kirito said as he helped Leefa to her feet, "I have to say that this was pretty unexpected."

"I guess this is what happens when an avatar crosses dimensions then," Leefa muttered to herself.

"In any case-" Wisemon spoke up, "I do believe it's time we go confront the Terminal?"

"Right!" everyone nodded in agreement.

* * *

From all 100 floors- glowing dots of various colors emerged from the Castle- flying out into the city towards their single target- the Quartzmon Terminal.

From its golden feet- various beasts and monsters- all of them Towers- emerged to flood the city streets.

"Knights of the Blood Oath!" Heathcliff called out as he spread his white wings to come to a halt infront of a group of flying Knights with blood red wings- "For Aincrad! For Earth! FOR OUR HOME!"

"RAAAAHHH!" Everyone behind him roared in agreement- and with that- they all soared down towards the army of Towers flooding the streets.

Kirito zipped out of the Palace and soared up into the air- getting a sense of feeling for his newly gained, translucent black wings. "Okay...this is going to change my fight style a bit..." He smirked, "But I love a good challenge!" And with that- he narrowed his eyes at a Pteramon Tower and zoomed towards it at mach speed- slicing through the metal-dinosaur with both swords and a sonic boom.

From the 22nd Floor- Asuna took flight on bright white wings of her own- with Yui right beside her. She quickly saw that stunt of Kirito's, and flew up to join him.

Leefa, meanwhile, just floated above the castle for a moment looking down at the city below in surprise. "It's so...different up here..." She was so caught up that she didn't even feel Klein putting a hand on her shoulder and asking, "Ready to kick some Quartz Crystals back where they came from?"

* * *

"HRRRAAAH!" Yuu had found that wielding a death scythe mid air was no easy task- especially when the Scythe itself had wings that could accelerate beyond normal swinging speed.

This lead to him deciding to take the fight towards the ground rather than to mid air. As he zipped down towards a mob of SAO Goblins being wailed away upon by a WarGreymon and a MegaKabuterimon, he caught sight of Tai and Izzy encouraging their Digimon.

"Tai! Izzy!" Yuu shouted.

"Woah!" Tai's eyes went wide when he spotted the boy- "Since when could you fly?!"

"About a minute ago," Yuu shrugged. "How goes the fight down here?"

"We've got a mixing of Digimon Towers and unknown monster towers," Izzy explained- "I'm guessing the unknowns are from Sword Art Online?"

"Probably!" Yuu nodded as he let Corone shift into her human form again to take on random opponents at her own leisure- he reloaded Spadamon in his weapon form to compensate for being unarmed. "There might be some from Alfheim as well."

"At the rate Quartzmon's pumping these guys out," WarGreymon shouted as he punched a Goblin into another's sword strike- "we're going to be over run pretty quickly- even with the extra back up!"

_*cue No Helping It! I'll Suck Up for Just One Minute and Twenty Seconds! GURREN LAGANN OST*_

"Agreed!" MegaKabuterimon squashed one flat- "They just keep coming!"

_"So we take out the Tower then,"_ Spadamon deduced, _"Then they stop spawning!"_

"We can't get close enough though-" Izzy said- "we tried already and there's a-"

_**KABLAM!**_

A massive explosion occurred just above the Quartzmon Terminal's body- protected from the blast by an orange, hexagonal energy plate.

"-Force field." Tai concluded as he glanced around for whatever caused it- "Who threw that-!?"

Up in the sky- suddenly there had appeared a large temporal rift.

Everything stopped as the rift pulsed- something was preparing to come through.

[0:35]

Suddenly- Massive floating ships emerged through the rift- with various smaller ones along side them- and at the front was one SpaceTrailmon with one certain Digimon King wearing a dashing red cape riding on the thing's nose.

"Shoutmon!" Yuu's eyes went wide.

"Are those Vanships!?" Tai's eyes went wide.

"Look! Those two flagships!" Izzy pointed at two certain black armored ships; "The _Silvana_ and the _Silvius_!"

"They really brought reinforcements from _**That**_ Universe!?" WarGreymon asked in surprise.

[0:44]

**"EVERYONE!" **Shoutmon snapped his fingers- and pointed at the Terminal- _**"SELECT YOUR TARGETS AND FIRE AT WILL!"**_

Missiles launched from the larger green and white ships- from the countries of Anatoray and Disith in a certain other dimension- selecting airborne Towers and obliterating them with specially designed warheads that only sought to cause damage towards Towers and nothing else.

The Smaller Vanships spread out and selected larger, land bound targets that were giving the SAO players a hard time.

Each Vanship would launch off small hydrogen propelled canisters from under their wings and would cause the Towers to explode into cubes upon impact.

[0:52]

Kirito and Asuna stared out at the sudden decimation of Quartzmon's forces with wide eyes.

"W...Where did these guys come from?" Asuna asked.

Kirito was left speechless as a certain Vespa variation of Vanship swung past them, and the blond haired, green eyed pilot girl waved and grinned at them before being berated by her dark haired copilot.

"Fam! Eyes on the sky!"

"Sorry! Sorry!"

[0:59]

"Damn!" Klein laughed as he watched a massive Disith warship fire down upon a flock of angry Dragon Towers with ease- sparing a group of SAO Players who had just about to become over run. "These guys are good!"

[1:07]

Meanwhile- the Quartzmon on the Terminal top just stared on in confusion- "Huh...So they decided to resort to this kind of strategy?"

He sighed- "Regardless- they still cannot pierce this shield that I've-"

_**"HEEE~EEEY!"**_

It was then that Quartzmon glanced up in time to see a certain, green plated, four legged, drill wielding Evangelion Unit 05 descending towards him after jumping off of a random Anatoray ship.

Quartzmon flared up his force field- but found that Unit-05's Drill spun right through it without a problem-

**"SURPRISE ANTI-AT FIELD GIGA DRILL BREAKER!"** Rei Ayanami shouted through the Eva's Loud Speakers.

"OH Crap In a Hat-!" Quartzmon managed to spit out before the drill ran him through and through.

The Terminal Exploded into a shower of cubes and flashes of light that drew everyone's attention towards it.

* * *

The Quartzmon who had hidden inside Noboyuki, Sugou, leaned against a window as he watched the Terminal he'd called for be destroyed in an instant.

He started laughing- "Hah...Ahahahaha...An Evangelion..." His laughter turned to coughing- but he still persisted- "They brought in an Evangelion and Exiles...!"

And then he coughed up something rather surprising- a tiny, blood coated, silver drill.

"...?" Quartzmon's eyes screwed up at the sight- and then he fell backwards towards the ground as his heart finally gave out.

"Noboyuki-san!" the person who had been escorting him rushed to his side...

But alas- it was too late.

The body had rejected the new mind- killing itself in the process.

Nothing could be done.

The Traitor had died by being betrayed by both the one he intended to defect to and by his own body.

* * *

The remaining Towers were quickly cleaned up- and the reinforcements from another dimension sailed away back into the rift that they'd come from.

That was the news that Ryouma had last heard a little over an hour ago.

The plan had failed.

_**click.**_

Ryouma looked up when the door opened to the interrogation room he'd been deposited in. "W...What?" He stared on as he tried to work is jaw into saying something coherent.

"Surprised?" Shoutmon asked.

"How?" Ryouma's eyes went wide- "You should be dead! You were trapped in a doomed timeline!"

"I have you to thank for that, actually," Shoutmon said as he closed the door behind him- then took a few steps to begin circling Ryouma. "A Gravimon in that timeline told me that anything can happen in a doomed timeline so long as it ends up cleared out before entropy sets in."

"...What did you do?" Ryouma asked- leaning in towards Shoutmon when he was directly across from him. "What. Did. You. _**DO!?"**_

"Me?" Shoutmon laughed lightly- "All I did was the same thing Taiki did. Pack up and leave!"

"..." Ryouma stared on in confusion as Shoutmon smirked rather dangerously.

"And besides, you gave me the idea too."

"What? How?!"

"You Xrossed yourself with a Sun-" Shoutmon leaned in to whisper almost conspiratorially upon seeing the horror flash across Ryouma's face, "claimed your 'new found' Gravity powers were from that. But you see...You used them wrong."

"Wh...what?" Ryouma was panicking now- how much did he KNOW?

"You pushed instead of pulled-" Shoutmon explained, "I might have bought it if you didn't do it like that..." He lowered his voice even more to a barely audible whisper, _"Quartzmon."_

"Y..You figured it out?" Ryouma asked.

"You- Gravimon- are actually you- Quartzmon-" Shoutmon pulled away from the silver haired boy and resumed his circling, "I don't know the exact loop, but I'd wadger a guess that the Gravimon who crashed onto our Earth three years ago eventually became Quartzmon- who then went back in time and ensured his own birth by recruiting you for his own- ah, sorry, _**YOUR**_ own plans."

"Sigh," Ryouma sighed- "If you know that much then you're probably on the path towards hunting down the final mes."

"Oh definitely," Shoutmon chuckled, "in fact...that Gravimon-Quartzmon-Ryouma that screwed this whole plan up on? Guess where I ended up blasting him into." Shoutmon smirked from behind Ryouma's line of sight- "Go ahead- guess!"

"...A blue rift in space?" Ryouma asked.

"_Exactly!_" Shoutmon chuckled, "I wouldn't have known the significance of that if I hadn't seen something fly into it just moments before. Wanna take a bet as to what that is?" Ryouma said nothing. "No? Not a clue?" Again- Ryouma said nothing. "Alright then, I'll tell you..." He leaned in towards Ryouma and whispered into his ear- _"A. Golden. Comet."_ Ryouma tensed up, and Shoutmon pulled away. "You know what I'm going to find if I go through that warp, don't you?" Shoutmon asked as he resumed circling. "I don't got a clue, honestly, but I'll take a wild guess."

"You'll never expect what's behind curtain number one," Ryouma said with a hollow voice- all emotion drained from it.

"I'll find you," Shoutmon said as he stepped towards the door, "I'll find the _You_ that isn't doomed to die because you split yourself too thin." He reached for the handle, "I suspect that this little meeting uninterupted means you'll be rotting in jail here for a very, _very_ long time," Shoutmon pulled the door open and stepped through. "Enjoy the rest of your life, Ryouma."

**THUD-**_**click.**_

Ryouma sat there for a few moments in silence.

He took in a sharp breath- clenched his fists- and then sobbed as tears started to collect at his eyes- "Damn it! _Damn it! __**DAMN IT!**_"

Tears hit the table as he sobbed again.

"What makes them win?" he asked to the empty room- "What is giving them the power to beat me at every _**TURN!?**_"

This particular Ryouma would not get the answer to that question for another three weeks.

* * *

SpaceTrailmon touched down on the first biggest gear that would fit it. Just behind it- Unit 05 had been hoisted down onto a gear that would fit it as well some time earlier.

Hideaki let out a sigh of relief once he felt the ship touch down. "Alright then...here we are..."

He got up out of the chair and quickly stalked down the hallway past the kitchen- where Kaoru, Mizuki, and Rina were all chatting about one thing or another- he continued on past them into the Time Engine room- "Oi, we're here!"

"Right!" Kaiyumi called from underneath the engine. "Thanks!"

Hideaki shook his head and turned to leave- nearly bumping into the Watch Maker as he did such- "Sorry..." And with that he walked off.

"So," The Watch Maker began- "how goes the modifications?"

"Pulling out the paradox inhibitor that just got installed is actually a lot harder than you'd think!" Kaiyumi huffed- "Especially when you THEN have to make sure that all the necessary ports are going to be cross compatible with the big machine we're plugging it into, ALL the while trying not to break anything else that's important!" She sighed- "Future You really is a genius with this Engine, by the way. I can't wait to ask him how he built it."

"If everything goes according to plan with the letter, then you'll get the chance soon enough," The Watch Maker chuckled as he glanced at a new watch on his wrist- a Chrono Synchronizer. Three weeks- it's timer read.

Kaiyumi stopped her work for a few moments to turn her head and look at him out from under the engine- "You're really sure you want to go through with this, Emmit?"

"It's the only way to ensure a happy ending for everyone," The Watch Maker said flatly, "my present self included."

"...I see." Kaiyumi turned back to her work, then called out- "Simon! Can you get me that Three Quarters wrench?"

The boy shot up from where he'd been napping in a pile of tools not a moment later. "Huh-Wha?"

"Three-Quarters Wrench!" Kaiyumi repeated- "Chop Chop!"

**THE TEMPORAL DIVE MACHINE CONTROL ROOM_ _ _|**

"So wait- they're all fine with letting us take Aincrad?" Yuu asked- eyes wide.

"Everyone agrees that the Governments shouldn't have their hands on this power," Heathcliff nodded, "and the only players that aren't fully okay with you taking it out are the ones that want to stay here on it to go where-ever it goes...which surprisingly to my count been over Eighty Percent of the surviving players- the ones who didn't remain within the Starting City for the entire game."

"Two years trying to escape and suddenly people want to _Stay_?" Lizbeth asked, eyes widening.

"We're still here, aren't we?" Kirito asked.

"I guess..." Lizbeth frowned.

"If we can easily return to this earth at any time, I think a lot of people won't mind staying," Asuna suggested a reason why, "it would be more like the game SAO was meant to be for them, I think?"

"That's quite true," Heathcliff nodded, "and as well- the sudden ability to summon wings makes us a rather large target for...scientists."

A shiver went down the group's spines.

"At any rate, Aincrad was meant to wander without a master," Heathcliff continued on, "I think that is what it truly wants deep within its core."

"I guess that makes sense," Lizbeth nodded.

"Still, we're not pulling out until we've got our pressing business here finished," Yuu noted. "The tower cleanup, and everyone getting a chance to return to their families..."

"You've got three days," Came Shoutmon's voice as he walked up into the room, "that's as long as I had to wait to get everything together to come here, so that's as long as you'll have to get it together too."

"Now Shoutmon...!" Yuu frowned at the sudden order.

"Three days?" Asuna asked, glancing at Kirito, "I think we can take care of everything in three days."

"Yeah," Kirito nodded- "Three days is good for me."

"Liz?" Asuna looked to her pink haired friend- who had her arms crossed as she tapped her foot to think.

"I'd be happier with four!" Lizbeth said finally- "But I can deal with three days!"

"I'll let the rest of the players know that if they want extended time, they can stay," Heathcliff said, "but for those wishing to head out off the bat, we'll be departing in three days."

Yuu's frown deepened a bit at that exchange, and so, once the room emptied out, pulled Shoutmon aside. "What's with you?"

"Huh?" Shoutmon asked. "What?"

"Why are you in such a rush to get out of here?" Yuu asked. "It's not the doomed timeline thing, is it?"

"No, actually," Shoutmon smirked a bit- "I'm just in a rush to get out there so we can find Taiki and Sally."

"Shoutmon, it's been three years already-" Yuu began.

"I know where they landed," Shoutmon cut off the same old spiel before it began- "I know where they landed and I'm in a rush to get to them before Quartzmon does."

"Wait...seriously?" Yuu blinked in surprise.

"Does it look like I'm joking to you, Yuu?" Shoutmon asked as he pointed at his rather serious, but hopeful face.

"Well...no..."

"And besides that-" Shoutmon grinned, "I'll be happy not to have to do all this Time Travel any more once we're done with this!"

"You seriously think it can end- Just like that?" Yuu frowned a little.

"It's been three years, Yuu," Shoutmon repeated that oft-repeated phrase, "everything has an end, even grand, adventurous stories like ours." He smiled, "But then again- endings are just another form of beginnings. Who's not to say that we won't have new adventures waiting for us once we finish this one?"

**THREE DAYS LATER_ _ _|**

The world of Earth stared on as the castle Aincrad took to the skies once more- floating up into the atmosphere and activating it's purple shield.

A controlled window of space time ripped open in the skies above it- and with a single _**VWORP!**_ it shot across space and time towards its destination.

* * *

"By my estimates it'll take us about a day to get to the specific coordinates you marked down, Shoutmon," Wisemon explained as they hurtled towards the other side of the time-space continuum.

"A day huh?" Shoutmon asked- "Any way to speed it up?"

"Not really," Lizbeth said as she looked up from one of the consoles- "The three jumps the castle made before were to neighboring universes- so it was easy to get between them quickly. But this jump is taking us clear across to the furthest edge of everything there is."

"So we're basically making up for in carrying capacity what we lose in travel time?" Shoutmon asked.

"That sounds about right to me," Wisemon nodded.

"Alright then," Shoutmon nodded, "make the announcement whenever you get a chance."

And with that- he strolled off.

**AINCRAD ACT: FINISHED!**

_THE STORY CONTINUES ON IN:_

_**DIGIMON XROS WARS: ALTERNATE UNIVERSE 02!**_

_**X0VA-11! ENTER THE LAGANN CLUSTER!**_

* * *

**A.N.: And so ends this mini-arc of self-contained (Mostly) story. If you liked this story after stumbling onto it from the Xros Over category, and want to read more of such Xros Overs, please head on over to the full story, DXWAU02, and read the insanity for yourself! ^_^ I promise, you'll really like it! :D Thanks for reading! _DTC**


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